The Ballad of Derek and Cameron
by SophiaTab
Summary: This is the sequeal to How Derek Came to Hate Cameron. Please Read and Rewiew. Feedback feeds my habit. Thanks
1. Chapter 1

**The Past Sucked**

For Derek Reese the past sucked as much as the future. He took his men twenty years down the time line hoping to stop the machine hell from happening. He only got them slaughtered. At least, they died with steak and beer in their bellies. He killed Andy Goode. That got him the thinly veiled disgust of Sarah Connor, but Judgment Day still barreled forward. His little brother was dead. Dead before Derek even got there and buried in some grave that Sarah-of-the-Silent-Treatment wouldn't reveal yet. The only thing he had left from his old life was the one thing he wished most in the universe was gone, destroyed, never existed. The Metal Bitch had followed him back through time.

The first night after they were reunited he dreamed she raped him, or at least that was what he told himself when he remembered it the next morning. In the dream he had been strapped to the Connor's kitchen table, but left alone to sleep out the night. She glided into the room wearing a little white muscle shirt like she had on their wedding night. He tried not to look her and tried even harder to ignore how his body reacted to her. "What do you want, Metal?"

She pulled the sheet away. "The same thing you want, Husband."

He felt her fingers marching up his thigh. "Stop."

"You know you don't want me to."

His manhood was on fire. She arched her eyebrows. "You do remember I'm your wife."

"It's an automatic reaction. It could be any woman. It has been any woman. I've fucked hundreds since you."

"But how many have you made love to?" she replied.

His Cameron had never smirked. The one in his dream had. Her expression had been kind of sexy if he ignored the fact that she an enemy machine designed to kill every human she encountered. She leaned over his chest and took one of his nipples between her teeth. He bit down on his lip. She wasn't getting a response to him, but it felt like heaven.

"I use to leave a line of love bites down your chest every night. You said it was your final piece of protective gear."

Panic rose in him. How did she know that? Hadn't her memory been wiped? Then he remembered he was in the dream world. She knew what he knew including those things that he wished he could forget.

She pulled her nightshirt off. In the moon lit kitchen, she glowed a thousand times more beautiful than in the pale dust tinted tunnel light of their world. Her nipples weren't anything so plain as raspberries, but ruby-red jewels. He couldn't look away no matter how furiously he told himself their only heat was the fire of the machine hell. She leaped on to the table. Their gazes met.

"I'll scream for help," he said.

She smirked again; then crawled over him. Perfect skin slid against his scars until that honey soft center of her was a hair width from his boiling erection. "You'll scream, but it won't be for help."

"Metal bitch," he snarled.

She cocked her head to one side as she sank down on to him. "I'm your wife."

She was eternal bliss and ever lasting agony. He wanted to die. Give him a knife and he would have gladly opened the veins where his blood was sizzling. Her fingers fanned out across this chest until she found his nipples again. "Tell me you love me and I'll stop."

"Never."

Exquisite tremors shook his body. When he thought she was real when she had been his Cameron it had never been just fucking. Their first night had been the first night since Judgment Day he had felt an emotion other than rage. At the time he thought he had deflowered an angel. Now he knew she was a metal demon raping him body and soul. And he was on the edge of being a willing victim. No real woman knew him as well as this thing. She knew how to push his mind and body over the edge. Somehow he had to stop her.

"Tell me you love me." Her voice was husky with passion.

"I'm going to destroy you."

"You would have died for me." She ground her hips against him. It felt like even the table was shaking. "Tell me you love me."

She pulled his head upward toward the red-hot peaks of her breasts. He wondered why his restraints weren't preventing that. Did he have enough of a mind left to find out? He tried flexing his arms. They wouldn't move except to spiral around Cameron dragging her closer to him until he could bury his face in her chest. She rode him like a fucking Valkyrie or maybe the angel of death was a more appropriate description. And he gloried in it. He never wanted anything like he wanted her.

"Tell me you love me."

"No," he gasped fighting for control against the overwhelming tide. He twisted his hips against her. If he couldn't stop it, he had best get it over with. At least if he came that would end some of the pressure.

She pulled his head out of the hollow between her chest. The expression on her face would have broke him in two back when she was his Cameron, but now he knew she wasn't a real woman. She wasn't capable of being hurt even if there seemed to be tears in her eyes. "Why?"

"You're not real. This doesn't mean anything." He had to ejaculate soon and it would be inside her, but by now he wanted that as much as he wanted to kill her. Why care? It wasn't as if she could get pregnant.

"I'm your wife," she intoned vibrating from the tremors they now shared, but her eyes were still sad and wet.

"You're a goddamn machine," he said through clenched teeth.

Her eyes grew rounder. He knew that moment all right.

"I love you, Derek." Her voice was as shrill and high as nuclear wind.

Luckily it happened then and all the power in the universe poured through him burning his bones to gelatin and sending him to paradise with a demon kiss.

He had woken up on the kitchen floor in a mess of blood and other fluids. Luckily the kid who looked like his little brother found him, not Sarah Connor or the Metal Bitch. The kid who would be his commanding officer restitched his wounds, cleaned him up, and moved him to the couch. Of course, he should have expected that even as a teenager John Connor had known how to take care of the wounded and what teenage boy didn't know how to wash out semen stains? But John was so willing to take care of him and so damn good at it that Derek called him Kyle a couple of times by mistake which made everything worse. All the rage at the Metal and all the hurt for losing Kyle came back again and again, punching him in the stomach with the force of a T-888,

Of course, the kid that would be John Connor was a lot less gruff than the man he knew in the future. The kid put his arm around Derek while they sat on the couch and said over and over that it was all going to be all right and that Derek was a brave soldier just like his brother Kyle. Derek found himself talking about Kyle with Connor in a way he never had back in the future. Back there after Kyle got sent back, John Connor acted like Kyle never existed. Young John Connor wanted to know everything about Kyle, so Derek finally drifted off to sleep with good memories of his brother to protect him from the Metal Bitch.

Next morning he had his real confrontation with her. John and Sara were no where in sight, so he pulled himself off the couch despite the pain and went searching. The house was fucked up. Too many damn windows and not enough cover and why did they have to give the Metal her own room. It's not like she slept. Though she was laying on a bed when he found her, a bed in a room bigger than anything they had ever shared and certainly cleaner.

"What did you tell them?" he asked.

"You shouldn't be walking around," she said getting up from the bed.

He noticed the bed wasn't even dented where she had lain. That was definitely a good mattress. "What lies did you tell them about us?"

She looked up at him with that vulnerable, hurt expression that he so wanted to punch off of her face. "I told them nothing. John told me you would tell them when the time is right." She must have realized the logic confusion of what she had said. "John in our time before sending me back said not to tell them about us."

He met her gaze and didn't wilt. "That explains why John didn't think it was odd that you wanted to leave me to die."

"I wouldn't have. Pretending I was going to let you die was the fastest way to get them away from you. I would have taken you to the emergency room immediately. And when you were stable enough to be moved I would have broke you out of the hospital."

"Yeah right."

"You need to rest. You should go back to the couch. I'll help you." She touched his shoulder.

He jumped back and nearly fell to the floor. "Don't touch me!"

"Or you could lay down in here." She gestured toward her bed.

He steadied himself against the wall. "I'd sooner sleep in a snake pit."

"That wouldn't be very safe," she replied then started toward him..

He took a hand off the wall to ward her off. "Stay away from me. Just stay away from me. I don't know you. You don't know me. And they sure as hell don't need to know about our past." His insides tore to bits as he made it back to the couch, but he managed to land there. There was blood on his shirt. John found him soon enough, cleaned him up again, and told him to rest. He needed to rest. Everything was okay. He deserved to rest. Derek was a brave soldier just like his brother Kyle.

If it wasn't for John Connor, Derek would have taken out the Metal Bitch and then disappeared into the past with a plan to blow his brains out ten seconds after Judgment Day. But once he was alert it took him under five minutes to figure out the connection between how young John looked exactly like his brother when Kyle was a teenager and the way, back in the future, General Connor's eyes had shined whenever he looked at Kyle. At first it pissed him off to think about Sarah Connor using his little brother for sex when he remembered how Kyle worshipped her photo. Then he did the math. Sarah Connor had been younger than his brother when they met, a ditsy waitress by her own description, and completely unprepared for the juggernaut of fate barreling toward her in T-888 form. When he saw the shaft of pain that passed through Sarah when he asked about Kyle, he felt like weeping for joy. His little brother may have bled hard and died young, but he got the woman he wanted. _And she had loved him back!_ John Connor wasn't just hope for the future. He was Kyle's legacy. And as much as Derek had grudgingly respected the man who commanded him in the future, it could never match how much he loved the teenage boy that was his nephew. Unfortunately, whenever he thought too long about the circumstances around John's conception pain started around his stomach. It was probably the start of an ulcer. No problem, he would just disconnect from it. The mission was what counted.

Which meant the Metal Bitch had to go. It wasn't the he didn't trust her, but that John did. And he knew what that look in his nephew's eyes when Cameron was around, but Sarah wasn't meant. He had probably gazed at Cameron like that more than once himself. He didn't know what she was up to, but he knew what she was. And she had to burn.


	2. Chapter 2

**Getting Rid of the Guidance Counselor**

Reuniting with Acevada had been easy. All she had needed to do was find Acevada and speak the words that her old friend had said would set everything in motion. _Mi hermana._

"Just because I fixed your make-up, don't mean you're my home girl," the young Acevada had spat back.

"Of course. That's not how we became sisters." She plopped down on the bench beside Acevada. Cameron had calculated that in dealing with future allies it would ultimately be more expedient to behave as if their relationship already existed. Scientist that studied human predators referred to the behavior as false team building. Cameron knew from interrogations that the technique worked well though now, this time, it was not really false. They were a real team only Acevada didn't know that yet.

Acevada rolled one eye and twirled her hand at the side of her head. "Crazy white girl."

She started to get up, but Cameron grabbed her arm. "We don't have much time."

"Let me go, bitch!" Acevada dived for the twenty-two in her pocket. Cameron grabbed her other wrist squeezing nearly hard enough to shatter the bone. "You're a lousy shot with that hand." Without wasting more time, she dragged Acevada into an abandoned store and cuffed her to a beam. "We don't have much time. Changes have already been made that may speed up the time-line or completely alter it."

Acevada tried to kick the beam loose. "Bitch! I'm going to kill you!"

Cameron took the K-bar from her belt. "Pay attention! We don't have much time. Plenty of people think I'm a bitch, but I'm very hard to kill!" She sank the knife into her left arm all the way to the chassis.

Acevada stopped struggling. Her eyes grew into ovals. Her face turned a fungus pale. Cameron tore off the entire top flesh section of the arm. And the iron-willed Amazon Commander whose war raids would create multi-layer logic paradoxes in Skynet's most advance defense grid and who would personally hold the highest Terminator kill record in the entire human race vomited all over herself.

They didn't say anything in the twenty-seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds Cameron used to make repairs. Her biosystem could grow entire new layers of tissue with time, but it was quicker to utilize chucks of existing flesh with unruputured cells. Her biosystem could create the necessary connecting cells within days if not hours if she could get the proper nutrients. It would be necessary to keep her arm covered for awhile or the Connors and Derek would know something had happened. The fingerless gloves she had seen the skateboarders wearing would work.

"Does that hurt?" Acevada asked. Her voice was low and hallow.

Cameron shook her head. "No. My system registers the damage, so my programming can adjust to the new functional parameters, but the sensory perception of pain isn't present." Cameron reconsidered the answer she had given and a better explanation occurred to her. "I can feel pain, but this doesn't cause it." Cameron began to wipe off the vomit covering the Amazon Commander. Acevada didn't protest. She trembled, but only slightly. Cameron could already see the calculations running behind her friend's eyes.

"What do you want with me?" Low, still hollow, but not quite as bad as before.

Cameron discarded a filthy towel and picked up another. Getting Acevada clean was always the first step to getting her into her into a properly functioning state. "I need you to lead an army, found a new religion, and help save the human race." She paused "And you're going to be my best friend. We're going to be unstoppable."

Derek was a different situation. Twenty-seven hours, fifteen minutes, and thirty-eight seconds after being reunited with her husband in the early twenty-first century, Cameron Reese calculated that the older Acevada's predictions about how the time travel project could improve conditions between her and Derek were only fifty percent correct. She saved him from a T-888 again, but he still didn't trust her. He still called her a liar at every opportunity and urged John Connor not to trust her. And he still pronounced metal with same tone he had previously reserved for the worst of human profanities.

Future Acevada was right that there were many more useful tools for seducing Derek available in the pre-Judgment Day world. The amount of human artifacts available for her immediate use in this world required 102,000 gigabytes more of memory storage units than life at any of the Resistance's bases required. But the variety of human artifacts had proved more complicated than anticipated, especially clothing and make-up, and it was difficult to get data about their form and function from either of the Connors. Sarah Connor's only concerns about her wardrobe were how well did it camouflage her body if she needed to be hidden or how well did it display her body to distract male humans when she needed to camouflage her actions. John Connor gave his approval to anything and everything Cameron wore. Apparently the adolescent crush he had described before sending her back was already beginning to have an effect on his behavior. However she was learning. She made certain Derek had joined them at the table before giving Sarah the note.

"Who is Mr. Harris?" Sarah asked.

"One of the guidance counselor's at school. He does the grief counseling." John replied without looking up from his pancakes.

"Why didn't you tell me you were seeing a grief counselor?" Sarah said.

"I've never met him." John said.

Cameron kept her voice in absolute monotone. "Mr. Harris thinks I have post-traumatic stress syndrome because of the all the tragedies I have recently experienced."

"What is she talking about?" Sarah demanded.

"You told Mr. Harris a tornado hit our home before we moved here. And Cameron was the last person Jordan talked to before she killed herself." John explained.

"Mr. Harris talks about Jordan often. He tells me how special and mature she was. He says I am very similar to her. I have had eight meetings with him." Cameron said.

Derek's gaze shot up in her direction.

"Eight meetings! Why didn't anyone tell me about this?" Sarah exclaimed.

"I don't have every class with her," John replied. "I don't know why he's meeting with Cameron."

"Well, you have to find out. Guidance counselors get us on the radar." Sarah said.

Cameron maintained her monotone. "He wants to get into my pants."

Sarah and John were too busy arguing to notice the change in Derek. Cameron did. His nostrils flared. Fire filled his gaze, but not in a good way. Mission accomplished.

Sarah's attention turned to Cameron. "Apparently, the principal agrees with you about that. She wants to meet with me."

"I'll take care of it," Derek said.

"Like you took care of Andy Goode? Dead school officials bring down police and media radar." Sarah said.

"I said, I'll take care of it." Derek reiterated.

"They won't even let you on the campus," Sarah replied with the voice that meant she considered the matter settled.

Of course, it wasn't settled. No sooner had John and Sarah gone off to discuss whatever their plans were for the principal, Derek shot up out of his chair blocking her path to the refrigerator. "So, are you fucking the guidance counselor?'

"Such a relationship could have advantages in blackmail," she replied.

He shook his head. "I always knew you were a whore."

"You know that's a lie!" That was a dangerous miscalculation. The reply implied that she remembered the time before her supposed memory wipe when Derek had been her only husband and lover. For now he couldn't know her memory hadn't been destroyed. She would have to be more careful in the future, but his insult, the denial of their past it implied, caused all her distress sensors to go on alert at once.

She had made numerous calculations in preparing what she said next. She had to point out the logical errors in his behavior while reminding him of the pleasurable parts of their past without invoking painful memories. This appeared to be an optimal situation for those observations. "It's interesting how social norms changed after Judgment Day. A relationship between Jordan and Mr. Harris is considered improper in this time because of the age difference between them."

"So what," Derek replied.

Cameron kept her voice soft. "There is a similar discrepancy in our apparent ages, but in our time no one thought our relationship was inappropriate."

His eyes went dark and angry again, but he moved out of her path. "No one thought you were metal."

No matter how many times, she reset her distress sensors, they all still fired at once every time he referred to her as metal. She jerked open the refrigerator door. Let him think the sudden burst of cold air caused her skin to quiver.

"Why are you always rummaging in there. I thought your flesh sections needed less nutrients than a human body to maintain itself?" Derek asked.

There was no way he could know that without seriously studying Terminator anatomy. It caused her to recalculate probability ratios more favorably. And she had been preparing a reply for just such a confrontation between them for weeks. "L-absorbate acid," Cameron replied. She held small orange up to her cheek. "Nothing seems to fulfill my biosystem's needs as well as oranges."

Blood rose in his face, but he stalked away without saying another word.

. . . . . .

Waiting outside the high school Derek studied the documents he had bought a few hours before. Carlos did good work even if he was expensive. The little psycho had even managed to dig up a distant Reese relative whose I.D. was a perfect fit for Derek, so didn't even have to change his name, much. And the principal had been an easy talk. In fact the woman seemed relieved to meet Derek. Harris probably had a pattern of messing with students. His type usually did. Derek stuffed the papers back into their envelope. His target was in sight.

Even at a distance Harris oozed sleezebag. Derek watched the guidance counselor position himself between John and Cameron, but closer to Cameron, as the three walked across the quad. Isolating the girl was a classic alpha jerk mold but Harris looked confused since Cameron wasn't reacting at all. It might have been funny to watch this all play out. The counselor definitely needed to learn the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. However as much as Derek would have liked to let that lesson be taught in broken bones, there wasn't time. Something dark and evil starting churnning in his stomach. Harris had moved his hand halfway down Cameron's back. It shouldn't matter where or how anyone touched that Metal Bitch, but for a split second he didn't want them off Harris's radar. Derek wanted Harris rotting in a back yard grave. He pushed it down. For this to work, the threat had to be implied not in acted. Besides it wasn't like she mattered to him anymore.

John was the first to notice him. He didn't say anything until Derek walked over and mussed up his hair. "Cut it out," he snarled in teenage annoyance.

"Are you ever going to cut this, little bro? Looks like you're wearing a cat scalp." Derek said. He grabbed Cameron possessively and planted a sloppy kiss on her mouth. Now even the Metal looked shocked. Derek hadn't even known that was possible. At least, it took his mind off how good it felt to touch her again. And to taste her again. Her lips were heroin wrapped in velvet. He ignored the guidance counselor and let his gaze sweep down Cameron. It was damn hard to look like he was undressing her with his eyes without recalling how perfect her naked body was.

Harris looked puzzled, but it was clear he was about to try being as macho as a walking Ken doll could: perfect jaw set just so square, disapproving, but envious gaze focused on Derek. "Excuse me, you are . . ."

Derek cut him off quick. "Mike Reese, Cameron's husband."

Harris didn't offer his hand, so Derek stuck out his right. He kept his left wrapped around Cameron. His fingers were only centimeters from her soft, ripe breast.

Warily, Harris shook Derek's hand. He had a good grip, probably spent a lot of time masturbating, but Derek knew his was stronger. Last night he had practiced just how tight he could get without breaking bones.

"I wasn't aware Cameron was married," Harris said. It was a challenge.

"When the family moved to L.A. we thought it would be easier if Cameron just stuck with her maiden name for awhile since she stays with her mother whenever I'm deployed."

"You're a soldier?" Harris asked.

"Private military contractor. Sandline's better pay, no saluting, and I get my choice of weapons of mass retaliation." He slide his left hand down to Cameron's waist and pulled her as close as he could without dry humping her in public.

"I see. Will there be more deployments in your near future?"

Derek imagined he could see the wheels turning behind Harris's eyes. He racked his hand over Cameron's torso again. "Nah, my mother-in-law cabled that Cameron was having some problems. So I requested some training gigs, so I could take care of my little bride."

"That's commendable," Harris replied.

"Well, family should come first?" Derek said. He hooked his thumb in the direction of the high school administrative officers. "I just dropped Cameron's paper work off. Contact numbers are the same, but with me back in L.A., you should know I'm Carmeron's next-of-kin, not my mother-in-law. If she needs counseling, I need to know. The company's got good insurance, I'll get her whatever kind of therapy she needs."

"Of course," Harris said, but it wasn't over yet. "I didn't mean sound so surprised earlier when you said you were Cameron's husband, Mr. Reese. It's just that even if they keep their maiden names most of our married students wear rings, especially the young women. They're always very proud of their rings, at least, while the marriage is still working."

The silence hanging between them could be cut into block and used to insulate summer coolers.

"Derek hasn't brought me a ring yet," Cameron blurted out rapid fire.

Derek picked up her hand and planted a smacking kiss just above the knuckle of her ring finger. "And she's an angel for not pestering me about it." He shot a glance toward Harris. "But you're right, I ought to get her something just so everyone can tell at a glance, this girl's off the market."

"It's always a good idea," Harris concurred.

As soon as Harris walked away, Cameron kissed him. She practically jumped him and if this had been the old days, before he knew what she was, he would have had real trouble containing his reaction in a public place.

"I love you!" she exclaimed. She kissed his chin, his checks, his jaw, everywhere she could reach standing on her tiptoes. "You don't have to buy me a ring. You don't have to do anything except be with me."

He shoved her away. "Stop it!" He leaned closer. After all, other peopled could see them. "I'ld sooner fuck a T-888 than you."

Her face crumpled. It reminded him of the way she had looked back at Foxtrot right before he tried to electrocute her. "You said I was your wife."

"That was for show. The easiest way to get rid of Harris was to make him believe you had a man capable of really hurting him if he touched you. He may be a creep, but he's not stupid." He said. Some of hair had stuck to his sleeves. He brushed it off like it was toxic. "Where did John go?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Finding Vick's Chip**

Derek Reese had been with real women since he learned the truth about Cameron. Trying to blot out the memory of her, he had fucked anything that would sheath him. But he couldn't stop the past from invading his mind. Nothing yet could compare to that second, sweet night, first night as husband and wife, they spent in Connor's borrowed quarters. He remembered the light dancing in her eyes when he bathed her. They so rarely had enough water to wash their entire bodies at once. Bathing Cameron had been sublime. He had scrutinized, memorized, and worshipped every inch of her. Then he laid himself bare for her inspection telling her the story behind every scar and tattoo that marked him. For the longest while they had just laid talking, not quite ready to break the spell of so much new clean skin or the spotless white sheets.

"I don't know what it means to be married," she had confessed.

He remembered how protective he had felt when she said that. At the time, he thought she was only ignorant of human culture. "What does it mean? What does it mean?" He asked rhetorically while applying tiny, light kisses all over her shoulders. He hadn't kissed any woman like that since her. He barely touched them other than what was necessary to fuck them. And he was fucking again, hard and fast, with none of that shit about love to make him weak.

"What does it mean? It means I only do this with you." He started to caress her in a way that made her understand what he meant without having to use the new terminology he was still clumsy at using.

"What if woman needs you to help her have a baby?" Cameron had asked.

"They can pop Kyle's cherry or Nina can find someone else. You're my wife. I'm your husband. It means, I don't want anybody, but you from now on." He kissed her neck. "What does it mean? It means what I own is yours. That I share everything with you."

He remembered how she cataloged his meager possessions and how he wished he had more for her.

"A blanket, a bed sheet, an extra uniform blouse and pants, five canteens, a K-bar knife, two flashlights, a metal cup, a metal bowl, two forks, and a cap."

"Not what most newlyweds register for." For some reason he remembered smiling when he had said that.

She looked even more puzzled by his reply, so he kissed her lips and said it wasn't important. It was from the time before and didn't mean anything now.

"I own a blanket I made of fabric scraps, four scarves, a crank lantern and this morning Nina gave me a canvas curtain. If what you own is mine; then what I own is yours, so you have to start using the lantern now."

He had agreed. Then he pulled her up on top of him. They had made love that way for the first time and he had never seen anything more beautiful than her face when she came.

He heard music. It was the same classical music he had heard before in the tunnels when he saw her dancing and lost his soul. She had been so beautiful that day and he should have known, if by nothing else than that, she wasn't real. Nothing as beautiful as her could exist in his world. Sometimes at night though his bone tired body cried out for sleep he had stayed awake watching her lying beside him in that fake sleep he thought was angelic perfection. He had scarcely been able to believe she was really his in those days. He sure hadn't thought he deserved her.

Where the hell was that music coming from? Sarah was gone, so it had to be John. That music was too feminine for the future leader of the Resistance. A warrior needed martial strains or hard rock to remind him that life sucked and battle was no place for emotional softness.

Except when he got to the second floor, it was her, playing that same music, practically dancing the same steps only wearing even less, and time seemed to have turned back. His heart pounded like a Centaur passing over them. He could feel moisture running down his cheeks. And when she finally noticed him, and came to stand in front of him, her eyes soft and wet as his, he couldn't stop. He slammed her against his chest. She didn't feel like Metal. She felt like heaven. Her mouth satisfied his thirst. They managed to make it to the bed that was better than anything they had ever shared before. He pulled off her shirt and zeroed in on her pert nipples until she made those sounds that so absolutely weren't machine noise he easily banished all his second thoughts about what he was doing.

"My turn." She flipped him onto his back.

No words were used to reply, he just ripped his T-shirt down the center and let her mouth get busy. Oh yeah! This was what he had needed. Jesse had tried, but no woman knew his secret spots like Cameron. He squirmed as her tongue circled his nipple and reached under her pillow hoping to find something to hold onto for when she started using her teeth. His fingers collided with cold metal. It was small and loose, so he pulled it out from under the pillow to get it out of the way and pulled up a T-888 chip!

An iceberg was melted down and dumped on his groin. Metal Bitch! He had almost fell for it! He shoved it away hard enough to chip the wall to the left of the bed.

"It's not what you think!" It began.

"I think you're still the lying bitch you always were."

It had learned to mimic human emotions better in the time they had been apart. At least, it could parrot fear quite well now. "Derek, there's an important reason I saved the chip."

He got off the bed. "I'll just bet." He had to find Connor and convince him to burn the Bitch before whatever it planned on doing with the T-888 chip came to pass.


	4. Chapter 4

**Prom Night (Because We Were All Deprived of that Desired Episode)**

Morris couldn't stop moving as they waited in the Connor's hallway. "Are you sure he's not mad at me? I wouldn't have asked her out, if I had known she was married."

"It's cool really." John reassured him. "Derek wants Cameron to go to the prom and the school prefer he not be her date." The first statement was partially true. Neither Derek or his mom wanted him going out without cover. And the last statement was completely true. Derek went way over the no dates over twenty-one rule. John didn't like pretending Derek was married to Cameron. It got rid of Harris and explained Derek's presence in their house, but it made other things more awkward. It screwed with his long term plan of getting Cameron's cover story changed to his step sister or foster sister or something else not blood related to him. Or maybe she could eventually become his orphan cousin. In some parts of the world, cousins dated. But, at least he was excited about tonight. Double dating to the prom was probably the most normal teenage rite of passage he would ever have. He knew he wouldn't score with Cheryl. She wasn't that type. But, at least her father had agreed to let her go out with him.

"I still think you should have asked Riley," Morris said.

John checked his tie in the mirror one more time. "Do you know how much pleading I had to do to convince Mr. Weston to let me go out with Cheryl?"

"My point exactly. Riley's in foster care. Nobody cares what she does."

Mr. Weston had only finally agreed to the prom with two conditions: he drove them to and from the event and they had to leave at 10:00 p.m. His mom had certainly approved of those demands after she got a look at Mr. Weston's Hummer with bullet resistant windows. That car made John more and more curious about Cheryl's past. "Look at this way, bro. We don't have to waste money on a limo."

Morris noticed Derek first. "He looks mad."

"He always looks like that." John had expected Derek would scan Morris quick, deduce he was harmless, and then ignore them. Instead Derek stopped and didn't say anything for several seconds.

"Morris, right?" Derek finally asked.

"Yes, sir." It was more of squeak than an answer.

John spoke up. "Morris is a good friend."

Derek's gaze turned toward John. He nodded. "Of course, he is."

Derek sort of looked like he might be on the edge of a smile. That was sort of unnerving. He held out his hand. Morris shook it though it clearly looked like Derek was squeezing too hard. "I'm sure Cameron will be safe with Morris."

John could tell something else was going on in Derek's head and that something might be important. He pulled Derek in to the kitchen. "I can see it in your eyes. You know him. Does he have something to do with the machines? With the Resistance?"

Derek exhaled. "My first mission was a salvage operation. I pulled him out of a burning HK too soon by Morris's estimate. He stomped in my balls so hard I saw stars. He was right though. It was at least ten minutes before that HK blew and the Resistance needed the nuclear cells he was harvesting."

"Morris?"

"Between now and my time, Morris has got six years in a Skynetwork camp which may be the record. Later as we got more organized little warlords tried to make kingdoms in the ash. They say your old buddy still keeps some of their skills as paperweights. He didn't hold the knives, but he picked the targets. At what he does, he's one of your best. Communication and trade, it's the only way the human race will survive."

John digested the new information. "Mr. Weston doesn't seem to hate him as much as other guys Cheryl knows."

John had never seen the expression on Derek's face before and his stomach dropped into free-fall. "You recognize her name, too! You know something? What haven't you told me?"

"It's not important. At least, not important enough to upset you over it. You really seem to like the girl."

Derek had the advantage of fifty pounds and two decades of combat, but John had him against the wall in seconds. "What do you know? What's going to happen to Cheryl?"

Derek grinned. Hell, he was laughing. Way not good.

"Nothing, nothing happens to her. She has a long healthy life." Derek reassured him. "You know, I always wondered how they met."

John let go of Derek. His stomach was no longer in free-fall. It had completely bottomed out into that pit of no return. Sometimes knowing the future absolutely sucked. "They?"

Derek was still smiling. "Yeah, they. They've got thirteen, fourteen kids I am not really sure. But, I think it's the world record in my time."

John left the kitchen. His mom was fastening a corsage on Cameron's wrist while Morris looked on with interest. His expression telegraphed 'I'm too afraid of your brother-in-law to touch her." Cameron's appearance surprised him. She looked really good and not in way clothes thrown over a pretty girl's body usually amounted to casually sexy. Someone, it must have been good sales clerk, had gotten her to wear a slinky white dress with a little bit of sparkle and she had rhinestone combs in her hair like the Mexican girls wore. _She looks like a bride or an angel_. "You look beautiful!"

She cocked her head slightly and looked passed him. "What do you think, Derek? Is my appearance satisfactory for the prom?"

Derek smirked. "Wow, you almost look like a virgin." He started laughing as he headed back into the kitchen.

Morris jumped in. "I think you look really great, Cameron. In fact, I think I'm going to have the best looking date at the prom. No, offense to Cheryl, John."

"None taken."

When Mr. Weston arrived, Morris politely conducted her to the Hummer. It was considerably more gallantry than John had previously suspected his friend knew how to do. After closing the door on Cameron, he turned to John. "Bro, you're brother-in-law is really a jerk."

"Tell me about it."

. . . . . .

After the teenagers left Derek got his seventh and eight beer for the night. He had to stop relying on alcohol to deal with his feelings about Cameron, but tonight wasn't the night. He just wanted to get completely plastered and not think about anything.

Back when he thought she was human he had danced with her a couple of times. The first time had been during their two day honeymoon in Connor's borrowed quarters. Someone had loaned them an ancient Walkman and a cassette of _Air Supply_. The music was scratchy, dim, and probably older than both of them combined, but the way she melted in his arms to the sounds of _Lost in Love_. At the time, he had thought it was the closest he would ever get to heaven.

The second time had been to real music. An old man had come into the tunnels carrying a case he claimed was more valuable than his life and all the machines were chasing him over the contents. But instead of electronics he unpacked a violin. It may be the last Stradivarius on earth, the old man explained, and even the machines couldn't figure out how to duplicate its quality. Perry radioed it in and Derek thought somebody higher up was crazy because they sent a platoon to pick up the man and his instrument. But then the old man played for them while waiting for his evac. He played music more beautiful than any recording. It crept through the darkness of the tunnels and turned the dirt in the air to gold dust. Derek had just been holding her at the edge of the group at first.

"Do people dance to music like this?" she asked.

"Sometimes."

If earlier anyone had told him that he would lay his rifle against the wall and do the box step in public, he would have recommended them for mental evaluation, but that moment it had felt right. It felt like harmony with the universe like life was trying to make up for some of what the machines had stolen from him. He never had real teenage dates. He never went to the prom. But that night, fate sent an angel to dance with him and it felt like an even trade. He looked up from her eyes when he heard the clapping. Everyone was starring at them and there was a clear path between them and where the old man sat holding the violin. He tipped his hat in their direction. "This is what it is about. Music is the voice of love."

The evac crew arriving had stopped the man from saying anything else. Kyle walked over to them. He had that look on his face that he sometimes had when he stared at the picture of Connor's mother. "I'll find someplace else to sleep tonight," Kyle had said.

Sarah Connor's voice jarred him back to reality. "For God's sake, go to a bathroom!"

Damn, sweat pants were too revealing, but he wouldn't have this problem if he had a bedroom. Still, he hustled to the bathroom. No sense in getting into another argument with Sarah about personal space and privacy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Jesse**

Finding Jesse in the past had been a lifesaver for Derek Reese. He knew she was AWOL, but he couldn't bring himself to despise her. She was a warm body for the nights when thinking about Cameron made him want to open his veins. Though sometimes a question still buzzed in the back of his mind: _What was her original mission?_ He couldn't believe she just sneaked into a time displacement lab with help from a bubble tech. Somebody in high command, probably no less than the John Connor that led the Resistance in the future, had decided to send her back. Problem was Derek couldn't figure out why the John Connor of the future thought she would be useful to the John Connor of the past.

Unless her mission always had been to keep him from falling into whatever trap Cameron was plotting. Even if it wasn't that hot, sticky heaven making love with Cameron had been Jesse was still one hell of a lay. And at least, she never mentioned Cameron though he knew Jesse knew about her. The whole Resistance seemed to know about Cameron and the stupid young lieutenant that fell for a Terminator. His first hook-up after Cameron had been a French officer, sexy gorgeous the way super models had been before J-Day. They had screwed for hours. Then the moment came, lying drenched in sweat, when she propped her head up on one elbow and said, _so, do I fuck better than a Terminator_. That was the closest he had ever come to killing a woman outside of combat. But never then and never now had Jesse ever referred to Cameron's existence except in the general sense that there was too much metal around John Connor.

Of course, Jesse did present certain complications. The first time he returned to the Connors after a night with Jesse, and he hadn't even decided how or if he was going to tell John and Sarah about her, Cameron confronted him in the kitchen. "I can smell her on you!"

He should have guessed a Terminator's olfactory sensors would be sensitive enough to detect that, but something else in her voice bothered him more. That something was as dark as a Skynet camp guard ordering a family to their deaths. The machine must have realized this meant seducing him for her plans would be nearly impossible. "What's it to you? I thought you and John were in love now?"

The machine flinched. _Cool!_A half-second later he wasn't sure if he liked feeling that way. The day Cameron glitched had burned into his brain. And not because it had been ultimate proof that metal could not be trusted. That day he had watched the image of what he had once thought was a real woman he loved, declare she loved someone else. And even though he knew that she wasn't a real woman and that whatever was inside her was lying anyway, the words had cut through skin and flesh to the very bone and something barbaric and visceral had welled up from inside him. He had called her whore once. That day he had felt like saying it again. And something else occurred, something that scared him more than anything Skynet could create. For a split second, when the machine with the face of what he had once loved said I love you to John, he had wanted to kill John Connor.

"Future John told me his teenage self had a crush on me. He told me to use that information if necessary." A porcelain hand touched his elbow. "It was a ploy for time to stay alive to complete the mission."

He jerked his arm away. "You're not alive!"

Porcelain became cracked china and some of the shards struck his chest. Part of him wanted to beg at her feet for forgiveness. He reigned in his emotions. _It's a machine_. _She isn't real_!

"Who is she?" Cameron demanded.

Her gaze pierced through him again. The pain made him feel uneasy as if he had done something wrong. So instead of just snarling that it wasn't any of her fucking business, he told the truth, part of it at least. "A resistance fighter."

"Is it Jesse? Jesse hates me!"

How did she know Jesse's name? He probably didn't want to know the answer to that. Cameron's eyes were pure machine now. If he stared hard enough he could imagine the computer behind her face processing new calculations.

"What's her assignment?"

"I don't know. She wouldn't tell me." That was the truth.

For a moment, she didn't move. If she were human she would have appeared to be in deep thought. He wondered how many thousand possible scenarios she was running in her processing unit.

"We should tell John," she announced. "We don't know why future John sent her back, but maybe by observing how the mind of the John we have now processes information we can get an idea."

There were worse things than discussing his sex life with John and Sarah Connor and Cameron, being eaten alive by rats, for example.

"So, you got nothing from her? Not even a hint at what her original mission was?" Sarah Connor berated him.

"He got laid," Cameron said.

Cameron's gaze settled on him. _If looks could kill_. At least, John and Sarah appeared oblivious. "If I hadn't fucked her, Jesse would have been suspicious about why I came back." He was surprised at how easy that lie came to him. Well, it wasn't completely a lie, but it wasn't the reason he had fucked Jesse either.

John spoke for the first time. "How often were you sleeping with this woman before?"

_Sleeping with?_ That sounded like something his grandmother would have said. Sometimes the disconnect between the adult John he use to take orders from and the teenage John he knew now was kind of funny. But no one at this table other than him could appreciate that.

Derek met Cameron's burning gaze. "As often as I could." This was crazy. The machine actually looked jealous. Even worse, he felt guilty, and not because he was using Jesse for sex. This was insane. He couldn't cheat on something that wasn't alive. And Sarah Connor was beaming rays of death at him as if she had just caught him giving John porn. _Mother-of-the future, you're going to have to let him grow-up sometime._ Sarah ought to be glad Jesse was around. She wouldn't have to worry about walking in on him masturbating on her couch anymore.

"As fascinating as your post-apocalyptic sex life sounds, I don't see its relevance to your mission," Sarah said.

"He did the right thing," John said.

Derek's head snapped back toward John. This wasn't the boy, it was the man. He had heard those same words in that same solemn tone too many times before. More than that he recognized the expression on John's face. His skin wasn't as marked. The eyes weren't cut steel yet. But he knew what the slight angle of his head and the grim line of John's mouth meant. I've made my decision. The discussion is final.

"If Jesse is only battle fatigued and AWOL, it would still be better to rehabilitate her than to waste a resource. Derek rejecting her would only further her alienation from the Resistance. If it's something more, a mutiny in the future that I don't see coming or infiltration by the machines, I need to know now." John explained.

Derek's blood ran cold. That sounded exactly like the John Connor of the future. "In order for me to get more information, she'll have to believe we're still lovers."

"And that's a problem?" John said.

"It means I have to keep fucking her," Derek explained.

John didn't change. "Once again, that's a problem?"

"Doesn't it jeopardize his cover? He's supposed to be my husband," Cameron said.

John shrugged. "No. Plenty of men are cheating dogs."

Damn, there was too much glee in John's voice when he told her that. The kid must be dreaming of her every night. Somehow he had to destroy John's Cameron fantasies.

The machine scowled and stood up. "The motion detectors need to be checked."

John stopped her. "One more thing. Something's not right about Riley."

"Riley's in foster care. She has a lot of problems." Sarah said.

John shook his head. "I was in foster care. I know kids that grew up in the system. This is different. The way she moves, the way she watches things, the way she eats, there's only one person, I know that acts similar."

"Who?" Derek asked.

John's gaze met his. "You."

"That doesn't make any sense," Sarah objected. "A young Resistance fighter maybe, but why would you send an untrained teenage girl back?"

"Why would I send Jesse back?" John said. "We don't know why either of these women are here. If Riley's from the future, which I think she is, chances are they are connected. I need to know."

Since then he had been fucking for his flag. Or at least he tried to think about it that way on the days when he could keep his head above water long enough to think. The world was changing back to the one he knew too fast. John the boy was becoming John the man. Despite Sarah Connor's best efforts, Judgment Day was still barreling forward and he was facing the possibility of living through it twice. Nightmares of the past and the future tortured him. And most of all he wanted the Metal out of his head. Sometimes when he saw her, the nuclear fire burned in her eyes so hard, he trembled. Other times, her eyes were the ocean or at least how he imaged a Terminator's eyes might look if they were capable of crying. Seeing that made him hate her for being able to manipulate him so well; then hate himself for falling prey to it, so he went back to Jesse with more intensity because he wanted his human fuckbuddy to blot out the memory of his cyborg wife. He told Jesse he thought he loved her knowing it was a lie. A damning lie, considering the light he saw flicker across Jesse's face when he said those words, but he wanted it to be true. That should count for something. He wanted anything other than to have his soul tied forever to hunk of metal and vat grown flesh. But it wasn't working too well. The Metal Bitch's face flashed in his head whenever he came.

. . . . . . .

Sublimation, the replacement of one activity with another based on emotional ties between them, was one of the many facets of human behavior that created a logic paradox in Skynet's systems. Cameron was beginning to understand the mechanisms by which sublimation worked if not necessary the reasons it was so successful. If she superimposed Jesse's image onto the surface of the wall she needed to smash, the task registered as being more satisfying.

"You should wait until I have new recruits before doing more clearance work," Acevada said.

They had begun building the Amazons. So far their recruits were only a few dozen former gang girls that Acevada brought to her. None outside of Acevada had any real inkling of Cameron's true nature or any comprehension of the machine jihad poised before them. That revelation had to be done slowly. But displays of Cameron's strengths were useful in recruiting and in preparing them for the future. And it was an inexpensive way of remodeling. Building military cells, stockpiling resources, and creating the infrastructure the Resistance would need required a lot of capital.

Cameron sat down. Her satisfaction over the smashed wall was declining. "What do you call a whore that forgets to ask for payment?" Cameron asked.

"A stupid whore," Acevada replied.

Categorizing Jesse in such a manner was also satisfying though Cameron had not determined the programming mechanism that caused such a reaction in her sensors. Lately she had found discussing Jesse in negative terms all satisfying. And Acevada knew many complicated and eviscerating insults in English and Spanish. Of course, she had told Acevada about her past with Derek. Future John had only said to let Derek be the one to introduce Sarah and his teenage self to Cameron as Mrs. Reese. He had never said anything about not telling Acevada. And besides, weren't best friends supposed to share such secrets? Sometimes it occurred to her that if she had offered Jordan a secret to share that day, it might have cemented their relationship and the girl wouldn't have committed suicide. Jordan could have been useful.

"My rough calculation based on observable data and probability predictions is that there are one-hundred thousand men in the entire human Resistance in my time. I know of one-hundred that Jesse had sex with at least once which means world wide, she's fucked one out of every thousand men. However considering the limited the mobility of the human resistance even that of the navy, the ratio of how many men she has fucked at a given location is even higher." Cameron said.

"I'll kill her if you want me to," Acevada offered.

Cameron shook her head. "John said no."

"John's younger than me," Acevada said.

"He's making the right decision. We need to know what she's doing here. This is the type of decisions he has to learn how to make. And future John made me promise not to hurt her unless it became absolutely necessary. We're not at that point yet." _I can break my promises though_.

She felt Acevada's hands at her shoulders. Acevada had no formal training in massage therapy, but her fingers were very skilled in relieving muscle pressure and tension. "Did you locate the family I asked you to find?"

"There's a lot of people with the surname Hernandez in LA," Acevada replied. "If they are illegal, they wouldn't even use that name."

"Nina told me her family was legal. She was a military brat born on the San Diego Marine base." Cameron said. "Keep looking. She's important."

Acevada didn't reply. Suddenly she felt soft lips against her neck. A tremor ran down her body. It reminded her what she was missing with Derek now, but only in a small way. She turned around. "We're not sisters like that."

Acevada's face betrayed neither frustration or disappointment.

"Besides, it would really freak out our kids," Cameron said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Living the Life of Riley**

John was right about Riley. Derek recognized a tunnel rat when he saw one. He wondered why he hadn't realized it before. Probably because two women, no correction one woman and one metal thing, had kept his head spinning away from his responsibilities. Dealing with Cameron was more difficult in this world. In his time there had always been that slight difference between her and everyone else that had so intrigued him until he found out why. But in the past, she was the most familiar thing he had. He definitely didn't want to cling to her however.

Jesse was here, but she was different too. In his time Jesse had been part good soldier, part cynic, and part party girl that liked to fuck at any opportunity. Now the soldier was AWOL. The party girl still fucked anytime she wanted, but she didn't like calling it that. Sometimes he wondered how many guys she had fucked since being sent back. But ultimately he really didn't want to know. After Judgment Day the lack of medications had stopped the AIDS virus cold by killing off all the carriers, but HIV was still a risk in the early twenty-first century. Luckily condoms were easily available in this world. The cynic had taken over most of her personality. What had happened with Charles Fisher had really weirded him out. Now he didn't know the name of every single Grey collaborating with the machines, but he sure as hell would have remembered the name and the face of one that had tortured him. But the old man she had kidnapped meant nothing to him. However, Jesse had been so goddamn insistent; it had been hard not to take her seriously.

After they had set up the safe house, he and Timms had drunkeningly pondered the ramifications of time travel. Even sober, intellectual arguments went over the heads Sayles and Sumner, but Timms was more philosophical. His childhood had been a splattering of eastern beliefs, so Timms remembered bits of the _Vedas_, the books of Buddha and Gardner's neo-paganism. Karma, dharma, avatar, and incarnation came to his lips easily enough after a few beers. Besides Timms was the only one of his men who knew about Andy Goode. In the long nights they speculated if they could actually stop Judgment Day. For Derek the final verdict had always been, anything was worth a shot. But one time Timms had said, he thought they could possibly be spinning infinite worlds out into the cosmos through creating multiple alternate time lines. What if they all came crashing down on top of them? Timms asked. What if by being in the past knowing what they knew, they made the machine jihad even worse? At that point, Derek had taken the bottle out of the man's hand and sent him to bed. But lately, he wondered if killing Andy had changed anything. In the darkest parts of the night after he woke up with wet sheets from dreams of Cameron, he remembered scraps of Amazon philosophy. _Life was a great cycle. All things went around and came around_. Was it possible Judgment Day was inevitable?

Was it possible the Jesse he fucked now had come from a different time line than him? She was similar, but not the same as he remembered her, but that could just be the effect of the time spent apart. Her rage against the machines had grown. She no longer ever offered the opinion that a reprogrammed terminator could be a "good bloke." And she mentioned Cameron now and hated her with a bitter fury that surprised even him. Was she a different person from the Jesse he had known? He didn't know enough tech to answer questions about time travel. He did know enough about fighting a war to know that there was no way in hell sending Riley back in time was a legitimate use of resources. He hadn't discovered the reason Jesse brought Riley back to this world yet, but it couldn't be good.

. . . . . . . .

Riley's first memories were pain. There was never enough food. Her stomach had teeth. Sometimes she thought she remembered a woman with blonde hair who cried a lot, but held her soft and warm in the darkness. But if she tried too hard to remember that woman she hurt inside and she started having nightmares about a terminator raid on a bunker. In the nightmares, the woman lay surrounded in red and a little girl was screaming while someone pulled her further and further away. She wasn't even sure where she got the name Riley. Sometimes she dreamed about the blonde woman singing it softly over and over, but dreams weren't necessarily truth. And dreams about the blonde woman only brought more pain. Later she learned about other pain in the secret recesses of her body because of what she had to do to earn enough food to stop some of the hunger pain. Sometime the pain was so bad she swore she wouldn't do the disgusting things anymore to earn food. She would just let the hunger pain roll over her until it all ended in death. But she could never keep that promise. The pain in her stomach was too powerful. It overrode her disgust and inner body pain. Until Jesse showed her what could be done with a hand held shower head, Riley had scarcely thought that the sexual parts of her body could be source of her own pleasure.

When she was old enough to realize why the world was so fucked up, she wanted to fight the machines. And she started to have good dreams. She dreamed of joining the Amazons and having sisters not fuck partners. She got sent to a Resettlement camp. It wasn't the worst place to be, but there were never enough food and a greater risk of terminator attack with so many people grouped together. Waiting for an empty slot in a training camp had seemed endless. The best slots went to people with the most skills. She had skills. She had never been gang property or been passed around or pimped out which was an accomplishment even if the Resistance officers she had spoken with didn't see it that way. To their eyes, her only skills were her slots.

When Jesse found her, Riley thought her golden moment had finally arrived. Jessie said she had a very important assignment for her. It was a special mission under the direction of General Connor himself. It could change the course of the war. The world Jesse had brought her into was paradise beyond her wildest dreams. People had everything in the past: water, clear and sparkling, whenever they wanted it; the best, most wonderful food ever; and safety, not just from machines, the human predators she had encountered in the pre-Judgment weren't good fighters. The street pimps were easy to out run. The only institutional predator she had met so far had been a guidance counselor at her high school. She laughed in his face and he backed away fast. The first month when they just stayed in the apartment while Jesse taught her about life before Judgment Day had been the happiest time in her life. It was like how she imagined joining the Amazons would be. Jesse taught her about so many amazing things: working cars, telephones, and how to wear make-up and match clothes. They bought clothes that were better even than the dress uniforms high ranking Resistance officers had. Soon Riley had a suitcase, a suitcase with wheels, filled with things that no one else had ever used. Every night they ate incredible meals like kung pao pork and stuffed shrimp followed by sweets and fresh fruit. And ice cream, she had never dreamed of anything as wonderful as ice cream. Later after Jesse got their fake identities established and she got put into the foster care system life was still wonderful. There was still unlimited running water, great food, and a bed to sleep in at night. And she didn't have to fuck her foster father to have all that. Some of the kids in her foster home had confided that some places weren't so good. Even in Paradise some people had to whore to survive, but for now she wasn't one of them. The past was so wonderful; it was weeks before she even asked Jesse about her mission for the Resistance.

Before the time displacement Jesse had told her she would meet many famous people. She had seen Derek Reese and the terminator Cameron. Everyone knew about them, but Riley had also heard the secret story, the one the women whispered among themselves and the Amazons would burn you for making bad jokes about. _The terminator surrendered out of love for him_. Derek Reese looked like the kind that would give a refuge scraps from his ration and if he did ask for something in return it would only be a hand job, not the really disgusting stuff that could tear your insides up. She knew he was a heroic soldier and he was handsome even by the standards of the Pre-Judgment Day world. If it were possible for a terminator to develop emotions, to be something other than a killing machine, she could see why one would develop feelings for Derek Reese. But Derek fucked Jesse now, which didn't seem right if the secret story was true. Of course, if the secret story were true that could explain some of Jesse's intense hate for Cameron. Riley knew enough about adult emotions to realize Jesse hated Cameron on a level that went far beyond fear of the machines. Jesse might call the terminator it, but it was obvious she thought Cameron was something more: a rival for a man. There was an Amazon saying that when women fought over a man they put everyone else in danger.

Cameron scared Riley more than the bombs dropped on Judgment Day. How could these pre-Judgment Day people, who were smart enough to build the machines, be so stupid about what was right before their eyes? Sometime she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. _Are you all blind?_ _Something is not right with John's sister. This is a machine. She's not a human being! _Except there were times when Cameron seemed all too human and real. Despite their amazing skills at observation and analysis neither Sarah nor John Connor seemed to notice that sometimes when Cameron gazed at Derek Reese the terminator looked like a human being, a human being in pain. And that seemed even more frightening. Was the story true? Was the machine in love Derek Reese? If it was true, the future did not bode well for Jesse.

Meeting John Connor in the past had been the biggest surprise of all. He wasn't what she expected. In her world he was larger than life, the hero that would save them all, or at least as many of them as possible. Here, in this time, he was a guy; serious and very intelligent, but still just a guy. The John Connor she had heard stories about all her life was a mighty warrior hardened and scarred from years of battling the machines. The John Connor she saw everyday now had smooth skin, probably less scars than her, and his face! His face made her think of a male angel. Sometimes he seemed even younger than her, more like the soft, sheltered kids she lived with at the foster home than the man who single-handedly turned the tide of the human war against the machines, and saved humanity from extinction. So what was her mission? Jesse finally had said it was to protect John from Cameron. But how could she do that? An unarmed human could never defeat a terminator.

"_Just keep him away from the metal as much as possible."_

"_How? She, I mean it, is suppose to be his sister. It lives with him every day."_

"_You're a pretty girl. You can figure out how."_

Those words had struck her harder than a terminator attack. All the Amazon like sisterly bonds she had thought existed between her and Jesse melted with a nuclear blast. Jesse meant fuck him. She might be rather ignorant of science, culture, history, and nearly everything else about the world, but Riley wasn't naïve. _Fuck him. Your special mission, Riley, for which General Connor leader of the Resistance and savior of the human race, selected you personally to travel across time, is to be the personal fuckdoll of his teenage self. _It wasn't the first time her hopes and dreams had shattered, but it was the most painful. She hated Jesse for being a lying bitch who pretended to be her friend when all she wanted was to use her as a whore. And sometimes she hated herself for not being able to see it soon enough. In her world, she could spot a pimp within seconds. For awhile she even hated John Connor. He was supposed to be a hero, someone who saved and protected everyone around him, not another creep on the prowl for somewhere to stick his dick.

It had taken her weeks to escalate her contact with him. Not that Jesse wasn't constantly urging her to do more and showing her how to do more like the trick with the hand held showerhead. Prior to Judgment Day they devoted entire stores to books and discs about fucking and sucking and sticking dicks into every orifice. It was all so disgusting she wanted to vomit. Spending more time with teenage John Connor had actually been the undoing of her hatred. He was a genuinely nice guy, not a guy who would act less disgusting for a little while because he wanted to get laid, but a guy who would spend a whole night with her without trying to get into her pants. He was a guy that would defend her without expecting a blowjob afterwards. He was a guy that actually seemed to listen when she talked and maybe cared about her feelings. It made her hopeful again. Maybe there was more than fucking on his mind. She had certainly never had a guy go this long without fucking her before.

When he suggested they skip school and go to Mexico, she didn't resist. His niceness was kind of infectious. It made her believe that whatever he was up to wasn't that bad. And Mexico was fun. She had never before thought skulls could become something beautiful. They were the tokens of death in her world, the symbol of the machines. But Day of the Dead was a party and skulls danced with bright flowers in their sockets. She felt like laughing and John didn't look so stone cold serious for once. He got them the honeymoon suite. She had never had a guy go to so much trouble for her before. Growing up, she had considered it good if they gave her plenty to eat and didn't beat her. Now she was in magical Mexico with the greatest hero of the Human Resistance who had had rented the best hotel room in the entire town for her. So maybe things were looking up.

Their suite had a hot tub. She had heard of hot tubs before, but had never been so close to one. Except theirs wasn't working until John fixed it for her. She jumped in and got John to jump in to. It was incredible. So much clean, warm water and no worries because, there was much more, clear water whenever they wanted it.

"This place is really great. Thanks for bringing me," she said.

John smiled. His smiles were always a little bit sad. It was one of the few things that always reminded her of the time she had come from. "I wouldn't have it any other way," he replied.

She kind of believed that or maybe it was just really, really wanting to believe that made her feel so good as the warm enticing water swirled around her. "Thanks, but I know you would rather be with Cheryl."

John shook his head. "Cheryl is with Morris now. He gets her into the world. She makes him more mature. It's how it should be."

He sounded so profound like he knew things other people didn't. Maybe he did? Maybe that was what gave him his strength against the machines. She had always heard that John Connor's gaze was powerful, but looking at him now she only thought his eyes were beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She wasn't use to thinking of men's eyes in that context. Eyes were the windows of the soul, somebody said, but often the souls she had seen were quite vile. John's eyes were pure and noble. Since they had met he had always been honest with her or at least as honest as he could possibly be under the circumstances. After all, he couldn't tell the average women in the early twenty-first century that he had to always be careful because machines from the future were trying to kill him. Suddenly, it didn't matter if the older John Connor in the future had sent her back to just be his personal fuckdoll because the younger John Connor that was with her now did like her and he was a good man. He didn't just want to fuck her. In all the stories she had ever heard, all the books she had ever read, and all the movies and television she had seen since coming to the Pre-Judgment Day world, this was how it was suppose to be. The man liked the woman and the woman liked him back and they had sex for pleasure, not because she needed him to protect her or give her food. So, for the first time in her life, she chose to kiss someone.

An electric current passed through her body when she kissed John. This was the way she had dreamed it should be. A kiss was supposed to be fiery and hot, but in a good way not like burn that was the gateway to more pain. He put his arms around her and she felt safe, protected, not confined. They kept kissing until it felt like the water in the hot tub had turned to steam around them.

John stopped. His face was only inches away from her. There was a vulnerability expression that she had never seen in a man from her time; at least, not one that lived for very long.

"Do you want me to stop?" he said.

He asked! He asked! Nobody had ever asked just because they cared about her feelings. She shook her head. "I don't want you stop, but we should get out of the hot tub. I don't think this would be a comfortable place for sex."

His face was the color of a scanner. She hadn't expected that, but she hadn't expected wanting to kiss him or wanting to do even more after she had kissed him. After they got out of the hot tube he didn't immediately try to take her to the bed. That surprised her. And thrilled her. He was waiting for her to make the first move! Getting him out of his clothes was easy enough, but then he started to tremble. She felt his chest. Such smooth unblemished skin, it was like silk over iron. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he rasped.

Her hands went lower to his manhood. He was a lot more ample than most skinny guys, but she had endured far worse. Maybe this time she wouldn't just be enduring it. His trembling grew worse and until she knew it was more than arousal. She moved closer so he would stare at her face, not her hands, and kissed his satiny upper torso. "What's wrong? You're trembling."

His eyes were wild, passion definitely and fear maybe which she didn't understand. Men didn't have anything to fear about sex with women. He exhaled. "Riley, I have never done this."

"Oh!" She shouldn't have said that. It sounded like a condemnation, but it wasn't. It had never occurred to her that he would be a virgin. She remembered the first time she had been fucked and how it felt like the pain and bleeding would never stop. But, men didn't bleed the first time they had sex, well, at least not the first time they had sex with a woman. Then something flashed in her mind. _I'm the woman John Connor loses his virginity with!_ She let go of his penis and moved her hands up to his strong shoulders. "It's all right. I know what to do," she whispered.

She guided him to the bed and started to undress. Suddenly, he got up and began searching through his pile of clothes. When she saw him take the condom out of his wallet, she started to tell him not to bother. She was probably sterile. In all the hundreds of times she had been fucked, she had never gotten pregnant. But, the condom was probably a good idea. She certain didn't want to be the woman that gave John Connor an STD. He was little less nervous when he got back in the bed and his eyes were still as beautiful. Such glorious fire, and for now this moment, she was the one causing all that beauty in him. He learned fast. His arms were strong, yet gentle. He hovered over her instead of pinning her to the bed. His lips were the perfect messengers of pleasure scorching a trail across her shoulders and breasts and the suckling drew passion not pain to the surface of her body. It didn't hurt when he entered her. Instead, he made her feel hot and good and her insides were hungry to feel more. She braced her legs against his back letting her body shake with the currents that until now she had always feared and hated, but mostly feared because they meant nothing, but pain, not this glorious frenzy of heat and pleasure. She was soaring through the atmosphere, racing toward Nirvana when John just collapsed like men always did.

"Son-of-bitch!" he swore softly before crashing unto the pillow next to her.

Her body still felt hot and prickly, but she was more worried about him. "What's wrong? Did I do something wrong?" _Did I do something that made you not want to continue having sex with me?_

He wouldn't raise his eyes to hers. "No, it was my fault. I came too soon."

She kissed his cheeks. "It's all right. Everything's good. You were great. No pain. You didn't hurt me a bit."

His gaze shot up to her. "Have some men hurt you during sex?"

What a crazy question? He really didn't know a lot about women. "Sex is usually pain for women. Some men like to inflict more pain than others."

He was crying now and holding her and kissing her. "I'm sorry, Riley. I'm so goddamn sorry." He kept repeating that over and over. She wondered what he was sorry about. Coming fast the first time a man had sex was normal. Usually she liked it that way. It caused less pain. And he had worn a condom, which made cleaning up, down there a lot easier. When he finally calmed down, she shifted his weight onto the mattress and started to get up. "I'm going to go the bathroom." Maybe the honeymoon suite even had a hand held showerhead.

"Un, uh." John pulled her back down to the bed. "There are things I can do to give you a climax."

"I can use the shower head," she said.

"I would rather you used me." He kissed her throat. His fingers were on her thigh encouraging them open. A moment later he flung the sheet off her legs with a crisp snap. He looked up at her. His eyes were bright again instead of weepy. "I'm pretty sure I've watched enough porn films to figure this out."

His lips were still perfect messengers. Fiery hot, yet soft and gentle, they stroked the currents to return to her body. She was soaring through the atmosphere and racing toward Nirvana again. This was how it was suppose to be. This was why people liked sex. It wasn't fair that men could come so easily. Behind her eyes a thousand atomic warheads were launched. Then all the currents converged into a flood and poured through her body. It was a memory wash of perfect sensations invading all her corners and chasing out the demons by smothering their hateful mouths with syrupy balm. She didn't open her eyes until the tides had completely ebbed.

John lay with his chin on her stomach. His eyes were serious, soft and sweet. No wonder everyone loved him. He genuinely cared about the people around him. "So was that better?"

"Way better. You did learn a lot from porn films," she teased.

He grinned and laid his head on her stomach. She should encourage him to sleep. He was probably exhausted. John handed her his watch. "Set this for two hours from now and after that I'll take you to dinner. I know some great restaurants."

Unfortunately, at dinner everything changed.

. . . . .

After Mexico, John bought Riley an aquamarine bracelet. Mostly, it was an apology for having a hair trigger. But it was also a bribe, just in case, she wasn't what he thought. On the off chance, she was just some orphan in foster care; he didn't want her talking to the police either. One of his Mom's old boyfriends used to say nothing smoothed over bad sex or kept a woman quiet better than jewelry. Except Riley just stared at the bracelet.

"You don't like it?" he asked.

"No, it's nice really." She finally picked up the box. But, she didn't take the bracelet out. "I like it."

John leaned closer until their foreheads touched. "But?"

"It doesn't seem very useful," she admitted.

He took a deep breath. "Okay, what kind of presents do you like?"

Riley looked very serious for a moment; then that smile returned. He knew it was a fake smile, but he didn't care. It was as close to happy and carefree as he was ever going to see close to him. "Have you ever been to Zanns?" she asked.

John had never been to Zanns, but he had been to in plenty of military surplus stores just like it. When he was a kid it had seemed like these were the only type of stores his mother shopped at. Zanns had the usual array of greens and browns, plus tactical and survival gear. Riley's idea of a great gift was a Black Hawk backpack in the urban camouflage colors of black and dark gray.

"You the boy Riley goes mountain climbing with?" the old man behind the counter asked.

Riley looked a little uneasy. She obviously did not like being recognized. He wondered how much time she spent at Zanns and if she bought a lot of things.

"Yeah," John replied.

The old man seemed pleased with this information. "Riley's the first girl I ever gave a chunk of Sea Bar to who didn't spit out immediately. You got a tough one."

John recognized Sea Bars. Modern hardtack, slightly less teeth cracking as the Civil War original, but with considerably more vitamins and nutrients. A person could survive on them for a very long time. Except for one version that somehow recreated a mild cranberry favor, they were bland and malty like prison loaf if it were baked to a hard brick., but they weren't inedible if you were hungry enough. His mom must have buried at least ten thousand of them in hidden caches throughout the United States and Mexico. Apparently, Riley hid stockpiles too.

"I'll take three boxes of Sea Bars. Cranberry if you got them," John said.

"Three boxes? You kids planning on hiking through the desert?" the old man asked.

"Nah, I just thought Riley and I would have a picnic in the park," John replied.

She kissed his check. The smile on her face was real at that moment. He had no doubt left. Riley had to come from the world after Judgment Day where a month's worth of food was worth more than precious stones and gold.

They didn't eat the Sea Bars in the park. They went to a motel instead. It was the kind of motel where a sixteen year old with cash could get a room, a million miles away from the honeymoon suite in Mexico, but Riley didn't seem to mind. In fact, she acted like she thought the room was sort of nice. This time he didn't tremble as much when they undressed. He even managed to undo a few of her buttons. This time he went down on her first and made damn sure she came before attending to his burning hard-on. And he remembered the trick his Uncle Derek had told him during their one man-to-man conversation about mentally reciting the fifty states and their capitals. He nearly made it to the Mississippi River. But when Riley laid her head on his shoulder afterwards he realized that had been far enough.

"You're a fast learner," she whispered.

The dim light had camouflaged the room's shabbiness. The noise from the street outside seemed to fade away at that moment. The world had shrunk down to just him and this girl who had been abused passed a level he could barely understand now, but whose depths he would eventually know quite well. It occurred to him that if he couldn't save the world, saving as many as possible was going to have to do. He rolled them over until she was astride him and her golden hair fell across both their shoulders. Despite post-coital exhaustion he managed to work some real excitement into his voice. "And you're the most amazing woman I know."

She looked charmed. "Really?"

He nipped at her chin. "Yeah, really, you remind me a lot of my mother."

No woman in the pre-Judgment Day twenty-first century would glow so much after hearing him say that. Most would be running away screaming, but Riley's eyes shined. Then he realized how dangerous that statement was, how much it revealed about what he knew, and carefully chose his next words. "You're both tough. You're both survivors. I know you had it rough growing up on the streets and in foster care." Smart choice. It was the truth, but still maintained the fictional reality around them. "You did what you had to do to survive and you won. You're still alive and you're still able to care about other people."

"Your mother doesn't like me," she said.

"All mothers hate their sons' girlfriends."

Riley genuinely smiled at him again. It felt like a victory. Later he would think about what he said to her. Girlfriend? Why the heck not? He was sleeping with her. And he didn't have any plans or frankly any desire, to go looking for someone else. He knew he wasn't in love with Riley, but he liked her a lot. More than that, he knew the world she had come from was worse than his darkness nightmares. He got scraps of intel about conditions in the future from his uncle, but Derek was mostly closed mouth about the subject. Even though she wouldn't admit where she was from, Riley gave him plenty of information. He saw that world in how she relished the most mediocre food and when she offered to let him do her in an alley not because it would be wild or kinky, but with total indifference over having sex against the side of a trash dumpster. He hadn't accepted that invitation. Instead, they went to another cheap motel and a look passed over her face like it was the Beverly-Wiltshire. Later he tried to pry more information from Derek and got told, yeah things are harsh. People don't have much privacy. Girls sometimes have to whore. What did he expect it? It was a war zone. Then Derek refused to talk anymore, so John bought Riley another box of Sea Bars and took her to Red Lobster. He knew he was wasting time and resources while Judgment Day loomed before them, but sometimes dancing on the abyss felt good. And he made Riley happy. After what she had been through, she deserved to be happy for awhile.

Cameron didn't like it. His mother really didn't like it. But instead of an open confrontation she sent his Uncle Derek to have another man-to-man talk. Luckily Derek seemed to be too consumed with his own romantic problems with Jessie. He got off easily by admitting up front that yeah, he was sleeping with her. Who would pass up the opportunity? Derek gave him advice about condom brands and KY jelly and told him to be discrete. His mother worried and going out without cover was dangerous.

Salvation came in the form of the Westons. Cheryl's father did not care how many of her approved friends she had over or what they did there as long as Cheryl didn't leave the family home. And the Westons' house was a fucking fortress of steel doors and bullet resistant walls. Cameras and motion detectors stood guard at every multiply locked entrance. There were two safety rooms and a bomb shelter in the basement. They had at-home double-dates with Sheryl and Morris sharing Chinese take-out and DVDs and later borrowed the guest room to work through the pages of _the Joy of Sex_. Sheryl seemed to think it was romantic and always left them candles and chocolate. Sometimes he overheard her and Riley talking about hair and make-up. And Morris never said anything about what was going on. A lot of men twice his age didn't have that decency. When they celebrated Morris's birthday, Morris even bought a second cake with Riley's name on it, He said he knew growing up in foster care she hadn't been given many birthday cakes. John bought Riley an impractical white silk slip. She told him it was ridiculous. He told her she looked like an angel in it, and later felt like maybe, just maybe he had convinced her of that. It wasn't love, but it sure as hell was fun. Then Riley slit her wrists.

The clock was ticking. John wanted to save Riley, but he knew he had to deal with Jessie. He had practically begged her to confess already, but she was tougher than he thought. He didn't think it was loyalty to Jessie though. The suicide attempt was evidence of how confused and divided her emotions were. He had to be John Connor for her, not John Baum, so maybe she could draw enough confidence to free herself.

. . . . . .

John was still crying when Derek came back. Sarah was comforting him while the metal stared out into space like she always did. Since her memory wipe that was probably all her programming knew to do, but Derek remembered times when he sobbed like a baby on her breast. The sweet warmth of her arms had been the only thing that got him through the darkest hours after machine attacks killed soldiers he had known for decades. He hadn't known Riley well, but it was still a loss. Poor little tunnel rat. He looked at Cameron again and in a blinding flash an image came to him of begging for forgiveness on his hands and knees. It would be so good to have someone now. Derek blasted that image into nuclear fire. He had enough of John's moping. "Snap out of it. There's plenty more pussy out there."

Sarah Connor got him in the jaw and groin, so fast he didn't know which blow was struck first. One second he was standing upright, then the room changed and he was staring up from the floor as she screamed at him.

"Don't say that! Don't you ever say that again! She was a beautiful young girl. And this war took her before she ever got a chance at life. It was a goddamn waste!"

"One of many," Derek shot back.

She kicked him again. "We honor the dead. We don't disrespect their memories."

John got up from the couch. "Never speak about Riley like that again." Even though his voice didn't hold the fury that was in Sarah's and Derek could see John was on the edge of crying again, Derek also knew this was one order he wouldn't be countermanding. John left the room without saying anything else. Sarah followed leaving him with the Metal. Cameron stared hard at him as if there were actually emotions going on underneath her fake skin.

"She's in John's memoirs," Cameron said.

"What?" Derek asked.

"Before I was sent back, John showed me some of his memoirs. He wrote about a woman named Riley who taught him how to make love. When I first met Riley, I wondered if she was that Riley."

"Whatever," Derek replied.

But that didn't shut up Cameron . "John also wrote she taught him that though war means losing people we care about, we should never stop caring."

"Since when do you know anything about caring for someone? You're a machine." Derek said.

She got up from the couch and walked away leaving him completely alone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Correcting a Mistake **

Derek searched through the house on automatic pilot. Cameron had been gone fourteen hours! Fifteen hours ago John had been sitting in Derek's truck when a drunk driver had plowed into them nearly caving in the passenger side. There were four bottles underneath the couch, not a lot, but it was hard liquor and they were mostly empty. He had kept beer in the hallway completely-useless-in-Los-Angeles coat closet. There hadn't been a way to keep it cold in the closet, but that hadn't been a problem. Back in the future, he had drunk plenty of lukewarm beer when they had been lucky enough to find it in the ruins. Half a six pack remained. Last beer run he had bought two cases! He located a vodka bottle in each bathroom. Hey, it was Russian after-shave. At least, that was the excuse he had planned on using if anyone had ever asked. There were bottles mixed in the bookshelves, behind the bookshelves, and in the cabinet drawers, mostly beer, but a splattering of Wild Turkey and vodka popped up, whatever had been cheapest at the time he had been buying. All of it went into the box. When he was through and the box was nearly bursting, he walked back into the kitchen and laid it on the table in front of Sarah Connor. "This is everything."

The ice in her eyes would have frozen a T-888. With one sweep of her right arm, the box crashed against the floor. "Do you think that's an apology? Do you think you can even remotely make up for what you did?"

"The guy that hit my truck was drunk, not me!" Derek shouted back. He had fucked up a lot. They didn't know how much he had fucked up with Cameron. They knew about Jesse, but the accident wasn't his fault even if Sarah was ready to burn him alive for it.

"John wouldn't have been there if his Uncle Derek hadn't suggested the way to get over his dead girlfriend was alcohol" Sarah snarled.

_Uncle Derek!_ It was the first time she had acknowledged that Kyle was John's father. But this wasn't the way he wanted that to happen. It was stupid and crazy, but ever since he realized John was his nephew there had been this fantasy stuck in his head that somehow they could be a family like he had with Kyle and with Cameron before he found out what she was. He still remembered how those times had felt and damned himself for enjoying the memories. Well, those fantasies had to die. Keeping John alive and making sure he turned out to be the John the world need was more important. "I bought him one beer. I drove him to Riley's grave to drink it and a drunk slammed into my truck on the way back. It could have happened anywhere anytime!"

Charlie came in. "Both of you shut up! We've got bigger problems. His fever is spiking! He's got to go to an ER."

"The ER is too dangerous," Sarah said.

Charlie was adamant. "He's boiling with fever! If it gets any worse, we're looking at possible brain damage."

Derek went into the living room to look at John. They had moved a bed in there for him because Charlie said the light was better and it was nearer his supplies and the electrical outlets his medical tools needed. John's face was burning and sweat soaked the sheet. Charlie was right. Derek had seen enough guys die from fever to realize that. Somehow they had to get John to a hospital, get him treatment, and get him out. Of course, convincing of Sarah of that wouldn't be so easy. Cameron burst through the door. She was carrying a box marked with Red Cross symbols.

"Where have you been?" Derek demanded.

"Getting a doctor," she replied.

A man followed her through the doorway. Derek recognized his type: hard muscle and eyes that staked out the entire room in seconds. Something about him seemed familiar, but this guy hadn't been sent back. He was too clean and well feed for that. But he seemed to know his way around sick people though and started to check John's vitals. What the hell was Cameron doing?

Sarah jumped in. "Cameron, who is this? I don't know him."

Charlie's expression turned cold. "I recognize him. He's the SEAL doctor that's been in the news, Arturo Hernandez." Charlie's gaze traveled to the stranger. "You kill your own."

The man looked up from John momentarily. "I killed two rapists and an asshole that tortured babies."

Cameron pushed Sarah and Charlie aside. "He's a good doctor and he's on the run. He'll be useful."

Hernandez was common in California. It was common in the Resistance too. There were even Amazons with that surname. Nina came to Derek's mind for a moment and he remembered something Cameron had said long ago about the Amazons sometimes having had husbands. It hit Derek hard enough to sting. He recognized this Dr. Hernandez too! He pulled Charlie away. "It's okay. He stitched my guts up after an attack."

Charlie's gaze traveled back to Derek. "Here or there?"

"There."

Charlie eyes bugged a little, but he stepped aside away from the bed, back to the medical supplies, and started laying out stuff Dr. Hernandez might need. Derek went back to the kitchen. He had seen enough battlefield surgery to not want to watch them work on John. Sarah was gone probably obsessing about the procedures about to be performed, but her mess of broken glass and spilled liquor remained. He should sweep it up. Maybe tomorrow, but not tonight. Tonight was for rest, closing his eyes and pretending this hell wasn't happening for a few hours, and maybe when he woke up Dr. Hernandez would say his nephew was going to be all right. Cameron sat done next to him. Another level of hell. Something should be said, he just didn't want to say it.

Luckily, she broke the silence first. "I've been analyzing your behavior."

"Like I care."

She continued. "The first night you went back to Jessie, you probably could have talked your way into her confidence without having sex with her. Which means you were motivated to have sex with her for reasons other than protecting John Connor and the Resistance?"

He already had a dark feeling about this conversation.

"Was it because of Mr. Harris?" she asked.

In a million years, he would never figure out how the computer under her metal skull worked. "Who?"

"The grief counselor from the high school. I tried to use him to make you jealous." She explained. "According to my files human males sometimes react to sexual jealously by seeking a retaliatory partner whom the source of the original jealousy would find the most threatening or repugnant."

Sometimes she didn't seem like metal. She was like a teenage girl still learning about adult relationships. It was dangerous for him to project his confusion on to her like that. She wasn't a human being! "No, I didn't have sex with Jesse because you tried to make with jealous with Mr. Harris."

She didn't let the topic drop. "Then why did you have sex with Jesse?"

_Because I couldn't be with you_. "I'm a guy. I don't need a reason to have sex just an opportunity."

"You could have come to me. You would have had the opportunity anytime. After all, I'm supposed to be your wife." She said.

"I'd sooner fuck a T-888."

She leaned toward him and cocked her head to one side. "Technically you already have. I am a more advanced model, but all my components were based on the T-888 series."

Then she did that firebomb kiss thing again, slamming him against the couch with her superior strength and impaling his spine with an electric volt straight from the two softest lips he had ever encountered. There were no more words, just her mouth against him and the rest of the world burning to ash around them. Suddenly as she began, she stopped, got up, and walked away. What the hell was she up to?

Sarah walked in. Okay, that sort of explained it. Cameron's sensors would have picked up Sarah's footsteps before he could hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears.

"Charlie and Arturo stabilized him. His temperature is going down." Sarah announced.

Derek nodded cautiously. Her face was still a flame.

"Get some porn and a bunch of lotion. Buy yourself a blow-up doll. But if you bring another Jesse into our lives again you won't have to worry about Judgment Day." Sarah said.

"I didn't bring Jesse into your lives," Derek snapped. "What are you going to do if John wants another Riley?"

"I can handle my son. Keep your penis in check." She replied.

Derek looked in on John. Sleeping quietly he looked so much like Kyle, Derek felt a knot in his chest. Sometimes at night he imagined what he would say to his brother if somehow miraculously he could talk to Kyle once last time. _I love you, bro. Your son is the greatest. Yeah, your son with Sarah Connor. You're gonna get everything you ever wanted. But why did you have to go see that Metal Bitch that was my wife before you got sent back?_ He needed to sleep, but if he slept he risked dreaming about her. Instead he sat down by the bed and counted John's breathes. Slow and clear, that was a good thing.

Of course, once John recovered there was a whole new world of problems to deal with. They could send Dr. Hernandez underground. There were always illegal clinics needing good hands for gunshot wounds that couldn't be reported to the police. But Sarah would probably want to keep Charlie around which was an even bigger problem. Derek didn't have anything against the man. Charlie was reliable, useful in a medical emergency, and he seemed to really care about John. Everything needed in a stepfather for Kyle's son, but Charlie was already on machine radar which meant one more fake I.D. to create, one more person to conceal, and one more way they could trip up. And what if John wanted another Riley? No, if wasn't a possibility there, any normal teenage boy devoted most of his waking moments to finding females willing to have sex with him. Unfortunately, Derek didn't like considering where John might go looking for another Riley. The one really great thing about John having a girlfriend had been she kept John away from Cameron. Maybe Morris had a hot cousin?

John started coughing. Derek didn't turn on the lights, but reached over the bed to comfort him. "It's okay, kid. Just lay there."

"What happened?" John murmured.

Derek stroked John's forehead. "You had an accident. Doc. Hernandez stitched you up. You're going to be fine."

Instead of going back to sleep, John opened his eyes even more. "And you sat up with me?"

"Yeah,"

He grinned. It was a sweet smile; the kind that Derek knew never crossed John Connor's face in the future. "Thanks."

"No problem," Derek replied.

"Is Kyle okay?" John asked.

Derek felt his neck hair rising at that question. "Who are you talking about, John?" He could sort of see the kid's eyes in the dim light. He didn't look like he was making a joke.

"Kyle, your brother, I borrowed his coat."

"John, what the hell are you talking about?" Derek turned on the nearest lamp. John nearly jumped out of the bed. He started shaking. There was real fear in his eyes.

Derek grabbed him. He remembered Kyle's blind panic on the day they realized the scope of what the machines had done "Calm down. You've have been injured and you need to relax."

"This place looks like one of my mother's living rooms." John stammered.

"It is your mother's living room," Derek reminded him.

"No, we should be in the tunnels. This place is too exposed. It's dangerous." John was frantic. Then his eyes gazed past Derek. "Allison?"

Cameron came closer. "Allison Young was the woman Skynet used as a base for my biological components. Her father was one of the early cyborg designers before Judgment Day."

Derek cut her off. "Get Charlie."

"Dr. Hernandez has more expertise," she said.

"Charlie knows the truth."

At least she didn't ague any further. But John was upset. Okay, panic was a more accurate description. Derek tried to hold him steady.

"Kyle was here. I saw him. And Allison was here with one of the spotter dogs. And the Asian guy, I think he's one of your men. He was the first person I saw." John said.

Derek patted his back. "It's okay, kid. Everything's okay."

Then Charlie came with mild sedatives firsts for John and then for Sarah. Derek listened in while Charlie reassured her. He had never been good at that. Maybe that was part of why he fell so hard for Cameron. She never needed comforting.

"The dreams are normal with the fever and the drugs we had to use to operate and stabilize him," Charlie explained.

Derek overheard Kyle's name. It was only natural since John never knew a father, he thought about Kyle a lot. Yeah, they definitely needed to keep Charlie around. Derek gazed back toward John. He was calm and drifting off to sleep, but not before Derek witnessed something that made his blood boil. Cameron was standing by the bed, no doubt scanning him for damage, when John reached for her hand. Luckily she only continued to stare with machine blankness. The hand dropped. John's eyes crashed into sleep. This had to stop! It absolutely could not happen!


	8. Chapter 8

**Second Honeymoon in Vegas**

Later it occurred to Derek that he could blame Sarah Connor for what happened. She sent Cameron with him into Las Vegas to meet with one of her weapons dealers. With cameras everywhere in the gamblers' paradise, it was too dangerous for Sarah or John. When they drove in the lights from the Strip banished the night, but all he could think about was the hotels. The fantasies of a master builder with a screaming hangover are how he had heard them described one time. Seeing them in all their pre-Judgment Day glory, he had to agree. Las Vegas was Oz for adults. He remembered his wedding night and how he would have sold his soul to have been in some tacky orange and brown Holiday Inn with Cameron instead of Connor's borrowed quarters, the best accommodations at Firebase Alpha, but still a closet with a bed and a card table. He glanced at Cameron. Her pupils were bouncing around. No doubt her sensors were trying to sort out the panorama around them. Good, she was more vulnerable and less of a threat that way. But that was also bad because it reminded him of when she had been his Cameron when he thought she was real. It reminded him so much his entire body burned. Since he knew the truth now, would it be so dangerous to indulge his urges? Hell, Jesse wouldn't have had such a hold on him if he hadn't wasted so much energy suppressing how much he wanted to be in Cameron's pants. He remembered the website he found a few days before, . Some men in the Pre-Judgment Day world paid thousands for life like fuck dolls. Was what he was thinking really any different?

The hell with it! He stopped fighting. If John could be stupid with Riley and nearly get himself killed. If Sarah could fuck around with Charlie and nearly get John killed, why the hell shouldn't he indulge a few fantasies? It wasn't like this time he thought she was real. He pulled into the parking garage of the Luxor.

"Why are we stopping?" Cameron asked.

He parked the truck. "I need some sleep."

"So drive out into the desert. I can stand watch all night." She offered.

"I got a better idea." He unhooked his seatbelt and moved closer to her. "I thought of a way we can avoid the problem that happened with Jesse."

Her next words were in perfect monotone. "Cut off your penis."

_Had she considered that!_ More likely Sarah had thought it would be funny to teach her to say that, or at least he hoped. "I'll admit what happened with Jesse was because she was leading me around by my dick. It shouldn't have happened, but it did. Important thing is to stop it from happening again."

She nodded. "And you have a plan to prevent this?"

He took a deep breath then dived into the abyss. "Yeah, we start having sex again."

It was even harder to judge her reactions than with a real woman, but he pushed forward. "The way I see things. If I had sex available for the asking, I won't notice the Jesses out here." He brushed his fingers across the cheek the way his Cameron had liked to be touched. "And I've seen the way you've started to act around John, how the part of you that's organic can't help react to all the flirting. You don't want John, no matter what he figured out how to do with Riley. Sixteen year old boys are lousy in bed."

She looked up. Her gaze shot through him until he retreated back by a few inches. "I was your first, but you wouldn't know that. The memory wipe took that away from you. Future John wouldn't have known to tell you that. Maybe Acevada, but she wouldn't waste time on memories of me."

She finally spoke. "Nina told me."

Yeah, Nina would. He had seen her once after everyone discovered the truth about Cameron. Nina had asked him why he wouldn't talk to his wife. His response hadn't been polite and he had ached for days from the beat down the Amazons had given him a few hours later. He slid back against Cameron. "I don't know how they made you. I don't know how John remade you. But I do know even with the mind wipe, your body remembers what I use to do to it.

She didn't reply and he couldn't tell if that meant anything. No more second-guesses; he dived onto that sweet spot on her neck that he never could get enough of. Jesse's skin had always had a greasy taste. Some of the other women he had been had been worse. But Cameron, she was cream and silk. How he missed the taste of her under his lips! And she was responding. He felt her body start to hum. He worked his way up to her mouth. Her lips still held fire. Of course, she was nuclear powered. She broke off the kiss and pushed him away, but not too hard, not even as hard as a real woman her size could push a man.

"Can't say you don't want it," he chided. But his next move was softer. He brushed his fingers across her cheek again.

"I want a ring," she said.

"Huh?" He hadn't expected that.

"I want a ring. If I'm going to play the part of your woman, I should look like it."

"Okay, plenty of pawn shops in Vegas." She was probably right. The lack of a ring had nearly tripped them up with the guidance counselor. The machine in her was just checking off a list.

"And I want come chocolates tonight, good ones, Godiva or Panache."

The way she said that bothered him. It reminded him of how some women bartered over sex. "I'm not buying you chocolate every time I want sex."

She leveled her gaze at him. "I didn't say you had to. But since my memory was wiped, I don't remember the first time we had sex, so this is like the first time again. After all, we didn't have to stop here. We could just as easily have sex in the car out in the desert. So I want my favorite snack."

"Okay," he agreed.

He should have bought the first ring in the case. Instead he bought the one he liked the most, a round stone set in prongs shaped like petals. Back in his world when he thought she was real, it was the ring he would have wanted to give her, a fake flower, in place of the real flowers he longed for her to have. In this world, well, it would help remind him, no matter how beautiful she was, Cameron was still just metal, not the real thing. He bought two medium size boxes of chocolate at Panache because he wanted the ribbons. Back in his time when he thought she was real, she used to sit between his legs while he brushed and braided her hair. And he would get so goddamn hard, he didn't remember if they pulled the curtain around their bed before they were on each other. Tonight he wanted to fuck her with green ribbons in her hair.

Except when he got back to the hotel things didn't work out the way he had planned. Their room was a thousand shades of beige. The lights from the Strip glowed through the ivory curtains. It wasn't a full suite, but they had a couch, a table and chairs, a bureau, a television and a level of cleanliness and luxury impossible in the world he came from. It reminded him of some of the ways he had dreamed heaven would be like. Cameron was an angel. She was just wearing a hotel bathrobe, but his whole body burned looking at her.

"Did you get my ring?" she asked.

If he wasn't careful, he would get lost in her eyes. He held up the little gold circle.

She extended her hand. "Put it on my finger."

The ring shined brighter than a star. So did her eyes and suddenly everything felt so goddamn close to real he could feel his chest tighten. Luckily, she spoke. "Did you remember the chocolate?"

He handed her the bag.

"Panache is my favorite!" she exclaimed.

For a half second he wondered what criteria a Terminator used to pick favorites among non-utilitarian things; then decided it wasn't worth wasting brain cells on that tonight. He watched her picking out chocolates. He had once dreamed of finding stale M&Ms or John Wayne bars for her. Memories came flooding back to him to bad it hurt: that first night together, how singularly perfect it had felt to hold her and later his shame over the life he had to offer her. This relatively safe room of cream and gold with running water and flower scented air was beyond anything he could have imagined possible in the tunnels with his Cameron. Now it was hollow. After all everything was just a prop for masturbation. She wasn't anymore real than any latex doll he could have bought in a sex shop. _Disconnect, Reese. If you're going to have regrets about your fantasies, you ought to make them worth it_. He took the bottle out of the bag.

Her eyes lurked up when he popped the cork. "Why do you have that?"

"Your favorite snack is chocolate. Mine's booze."

"You drink beer. That's champagne," she said.

"I wanted something different. After all we're not having sex in the car out in the desert." Their room didn't come with champagne glasses, but they had regular drinking glasses. He filled two of them halfway with bubbling liquid, then handed one to her.

She sat the glass on the table. "I'm not suppose to drink alcohol."

Back in his time, he had never known her to drink alcohol either, not that the swill they drank at Firebase Alpha was anything more than a notch above poison. He wondered for a moment if this wasn't something that should have been investigated earlier about Terminators. The possibility of a new weapon in the battle against the cyborgs intrigued him. "Really? What does it do to your flesh parts?"

"I don't know. I am not suppose to drink alcohol because according to my identification papers I'm under twenty-one. Underage drinking gets us on the radar." She explained.

For some reason, he felt like laughing over that, but managed not to. He handed the glass to her again. "It's legal for you to drink under twenty-one if your married and you're with your spouse."

She looked up at him with curious pixie eyes. "Really?"

He clinked their glasses together. "Really? Just like as long as we're married it's legal for me to fuck you even though you're underage."

She frowned. "I don't like that word."

Damn, she almost sounded like Jesse. He downed his entire glass in one swallow. "Okay, I won't use it."

She smiled slightly then drank some of her champagne. The smiled disappeared. "It tastes spoiled."

He tried not to smile. "Give it a try. It'll make you warm inside." He pressed the glass against her lips and tipped it upward.

She drank, but scowled afterwards and immediately popped a piece of chocolate into her mouth. Even when she scowled her lips were still perfect. He picked up her chin. "Has John ever touched you like this?"

"John has never placed three fingers under my chin," she said.

"That's not what I meant. Has John ever done anything sexual with you? Did you ever use sex as a way to keep him out of danger." It was a stupid thing to ask. It was probably a stupid thing to wonder about, but at the same time, a part of his brain that he didn't like acknowledging wanted to know.

She shook her head. "No, before he sent me back, John said that was the one thing I should never do." Her eyebrows wrinkled. "You were jealous of John?'

He slammed his mouth over her lips to avoid the question. He could taste the chocolate she had been eating, but there was something more. Cameron had always had a strange sort of physical purity in everything about her. It was probably only a reflection of her lab created biological components, but in earlier times it had seemed like some marker that she was above all the other women he had ever known. Electricity shot along his jaw and started to wash through him. He had missed this feeling also. Jesse had been an itch that had to be scratched. Cameron took over his senses when he kissed her and for awhile all the pain was lifted from his shoulders.

She pushed him away by a few inches. "Shower."

"Why? I'm just going to get sweaty." He reached for her, but she backed away.

"Because I want you to." Her voice was richer than the chocolate.

He stood up and started toward the bathroom.

"Wait." She handed him his shaving kit. "Smooth facial skin would be more conductive to physical sensations."

The shower cooled some of the fire that had been raging through his body until he saw what Cameron wore under her robe. For so long her little white muscle shirt had been embedded in his brain as the end-all-be-all of sexy female garments. Tonight that image shattered into a thousand pieces and was swept into the dustbin of his masturbation fantasies. Somehow she had acquired a real bride's nightgown the color of Pre-Judgment Day clouds which seemed to float over her body rather than hang from the miniscule straps that barely touched her shoulders.

"Where did you get this?" His fingers snagged on the material when he touched her.

"From the boutique on the first floor. I told the clerk I needed something to make my husband remember why he wanted to be with me. Do you like it?"

He was just wearing a towel. Pretty soon he wasn't going to be able to hide how much he liked her new gown, but he was having trouble finding the words. Her fingers scorched his chest and she came closer until he could feel little bits of the silk brushing against him. No, that was her skin!

"You should tell me, if you like it. That way I'll know what clothes to wear when we're alone without having to ask."

He remembered what he was here for and pulled her against him. "I like it a lot!"

They fell back into the bed. The sheets were slippery soft. She felt even softer like maybe she was a liquid metal model all along and could constantly change form to sliver from his grasp. No! she did not taste like metal. It seemed impossible for there to be a titanium chassis underneath such sweet flesh, but he knew it was there. This was a reprogrammed enemy screamed in his brain. Enemy! Then, why did she feel like angel? Why did he want her so much?

"Shouldn't I take this off?" she asked when he stopped for air.

He rubbed the silk into her skin. "I like the way this looks on you."

"But I'm hot."

An excellent development! He helped her remove the gown; then his senses overloaded with one look. Her image had come to him in dreams and nightmares. Now in flesh she was all he remembered and more. Need pulsed through him more powerful than hunger during the worst times after Judgment Day. But he had to move slowly. Even if she didn't have emotions, he had to make her enjoy this physically or his opportunities for future sex would be few and far between. _So how do you make a Terminator come? _ Well, he had done it before without knowing what he was doing. Hopefully the reprogrammed Cameron had some of the same physical responses his Cameron had. Gently he laid his hand against her right breast, lowered his head, and kissed the bud. "Do you remember this?"

Her eyes held confusion. Or maybe sensor disorientation was the correct term. Of course, if she had been a human woman he would have read her expression as fear. "Of course, you don't. The memory wipe took all that."

She appeared to relax after he said that. "My sensors detect more heat."

He suppressed the urge to laugh again by kissing her. Kissing her blotted everything else out of his mind and he pulled her closer. "I'm going to make you even warmer."

She cocked her head to one side. "Really?"

His hand slide between her thighs. She sure as hell didn't feel like a machine there. "Yeah, sizzling."

It was too much like their first night together. In her arms he found paradise and soul-draining pleasure that took away all his burdens at least for awhile And she seemed to like it as much as it could be said a machine liked something. She certainly seemed to learn sexual techniques fast, matching his moves or improving on them as they coupled over and over again. Yeah, it was what he had needed. It was everything he had been dreaming about for months. Beyond Jesse. Beyond all the nameless hook-ups. She burned into him with the heat of nuclear fury. She was his angel and his Achilles' heel. All he ever wanted resided in the form of an enemy killing machine.

Sleep pulled him into the dream world again where Judgement Day never happened, Skynet didn't exist, and Cameron was a real woman. He was standing in front of her with his arm in a sling. In the waking world, it was the arm that bore a Skynet tattoo. He was wearing hospital scrubs and the reflection in the mirror behind her had dark circles under his eyes and looked about seventy-five pounds less than he should weigh. Cameron had fury in her eyes.

"How could you? How could you fuck that Australian bitch?" she screamed.

"I was captured. Torture can make you do things you wouldn't do in your right mind." Memories of his captivity were hazy, but he remembered Jesse who he had thought had been a captured aid worker, but had been a double agent. Later, after escaping, he learned she was famous for breaking men when nothing else could. He hadn't betrayed his country, but he had betrayed his marriage vows and he had been stupid enough to confess that to Cameron.

She slapped him. "Liar! I should have known, you would always be a cheating dog."

"No! You're my life." He reached for her hands and she pulled them away. "Don't! Please!" He sank down on his knees. He would beg like a broken slave to keep his wife in the room. "Cameron, I love you!"

She slapped him again and kicked him. "How could you? How could you?"

More blows fell on his shoulders and face. He welcomed the pain. She could beat him black and blue, but it wouldn't hurt as much as he was already hurting. And he deserved it. He had fucked another woman. Somewhere between the beatings and the electric shocks and the starvation, the infamous Jesse Flores had been something to remind him he was human. But how could he ask Cameron to understand that he fucked another woman for the strength to survive long enough to make it back to her?

Cameron halted her assault. She was shaking. Her face cracked. "How could you?" she asked one more desperate time before breaking down into tears.

He stayed on his knees, but embraced her waist. "I'm sorry, Cameron. I'm so goddamn sorry. I was weak."

Her hands touched his scalp. At least, she wasn't pulling out his hair.

He looked up at her. Her eyes were flooding. He had never seen her in this much pain.

"I love you," he said again.

She touched his face with trembling hands. "God help me, I still love you."

He kissed her hands. "We'll make it through this. I swear to you, we will make it through this."

He woke up in Cameron's arms. The room was grayish and he remembered they were in Las Vegas and she wasn't real.

She rubbed his shoulders. "You were moaning in your sleep."

He looked at the clock on the nightstand: 4:00 a.m. There was still time for more sleep. "It was nothing just nightmares."

"You said my name."

"You were torturing me," he replied, but he didn't roll off her to go back to sleep. She still felt too good to give up.

. . . . . .

When Derek finally returned to sleep Cameron resumed analyzing their sexual encounter. The actions were the same as had occurred before between them. However her sensors did not register as complete as had occurred on other occasions. Her sensors had fired, but not at the capacity as occurred before. Some component had been either substandard or a system route had been compromised and no longer ran to maximum efficiency. Both she and Derek were at optimal health, so that could not be the problem. Sensory distractions from their surroundings could not have made a negative impact. This room was by far the most comfortable and erotically designed setting they had ever had. Her sensors had registered distress at one point when he asked if she remembered his oral caressing of her breast. It had occurred to her for a millisecond that he might suspect her memory wipe had been ineffective and was testing her, but his next statement indicated his remark had only been part of the foreplay. There was the champagne. Alcohol had a debilitating effect on organic systems. No doubt it had interfered with the functioning of some of her physical sensors which in turn effected neural processes resulting in a less than completely satisfactory response. She would not drink alcohol again before having sex with Derek. This evening actions had been acceptable and satisfying to a degree, but not the maximum optimal capacity she knew her system was capable of achieving. Yes, she would not drink alcohol again.


	9. Chapter 9

**The Day After**

The room was bright when Derek woke up. Back in L.A. this kind of light occurred near noon, but in Las Vegas the sun was already an inferno in the early morning. He glanced down at Cameron. She still looked like an angel. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't moving except for the chest movements that mimicked breathing. He hadn't completely understood everything she told him last night because he hadn't started to ask questions until he was on the edge of total exhaustion, but apparently Skynet had figured out Terminators had to be able to fake breathing or they couldn't pass as humans for very long. Hell, he had been fooled him for months. Last night before collapsing he had asked her to pretend to sleep until he told her to wake up in the morning. There was a time when waking up in her arms was the only thing that kept him alive. It wasn't fucking fair! He hit the shower. Washing off her scent was the first step in regaining control.

When he came back from the bathroom, she was still in the same position. He wondered just what she would let him do to her before reacting. For a split second, his impulses were all for crawling up her body until their faces were aligned and telling her to open her eyes when he kissed her. There had been moments like that in their past. At the time, it had seemed like magic. He shoved those memories into a dark corner and grabbed a room service menu. "You better grab a shower. We need to get on the road."

At least, she wore a bathrobe when she sat down for breakfast. "What's this?" she asked.

"Eggs Benedict. It's very nutritious." He tried to concentrate on the newspaper.

"I usually eat pancakes for breakfast," she said.

"I thought you might like something different," he replied.

"But you ordered pancakes for yourself," she said.

"I wanted the syrup," he said. There was open pitcher of syrup only a few inches from his fingers. The golden brown matched Cameron's eyes. For one nearly blinding moment the only thing he could think about was shoving aside the dishes, throwing her across the table, and pouring syrup down all her crevices.

"Why?"

Again the head tilt. How the fuck had he ever considered that an endearing habit? Unfortunately his body was having a different reaction. He pushed the syrup further away. "Eat your breakfast."

Later driving back to L.A. he struggled to keep his eyes on the road. Cameron kept squirming in the seat beside him. "What's wrong?"

"You didn't get all the syrup," she replied.

He wondered how well she processed suggestions. "I could pull over behind a billboard."

Was that a twitch in her face? It was as if her muscles instinctively knew they were suppose to grin, but the computer in her head couldn't process fast enough to realize it. Or maybe he had imagined it because projecting human reactions on to her made it easier for him to deal with just how good last night had been. _Congratulations, Reese, you've finally got the woman you want. Only she isn't a woman. She's Skynet Barbie!_

She reached under her shirt with a moist wipe. "No, what if a police officer caught us?"

"Show him our marriage license. Plead for mercy."

What came next surprised him. Before replying she slid closer to him, pulled his collar down, and kissed his throat. A lifetime ago when he thought she was real, she would do that. She had left red-hot marks up and down his chest. It had kept him warm for hours even on the coldest patrols. But this time her lips didn't go any further than a kiss. "You still have a warrant for escaping from the LAPD."

He felt her voice all the way down to his toes. "Yeah, probably not a good idea."

A moment later she laid her head against his shoulder just like a woman would, just like she had in the past. "We look more natural this way like a real couple," she said.

"Real couples spend plenty of time acting like they can't stand each other," he reminded her.

She didn't move away. And damn, it felt good to have her next to him. He hesitated for moment; then, pushed his suspicions into some dark corner and put his arm around her. Cool, soft fingers slide beneath his shirt buttons. Her other hand rested on the back of this neck.

"My hands are cold. You're warm," she said.

Her expression was machine blankness, but he doubted that was the case inside. Last night he had let her rediscover his sensitive places. It has been almost as fun as the first time they did that. In some ways the memory wipe made it easier for him. At least he knew they both weren't laying there burning with the memories of fabulous sex trying to pretend what they could have now was good enough to compensate. He resisted the urge to stop driving and start kissing her. "Be careful how you play with me. I've got to keep this truck on the road."

When they arrived back at the Connors, no one was home which was probably a good thing. His nipples had become bee stings. He barely managed to bring in the luggage before grabbing her. "Your room now!"

'It's our room now. Isn't it?" she asked.

He made a quick nod, picked up his backpack, and grabbed her around the waist. She fastened her mouth on his neck like a lamprey and he was lost. He had to get to that room now! And they weren't moving fast enough. Trying not to think about how it had felt when he thought she was human and he would pick her up because it was the only way he had to be romantic with her, he slid his hands down under her bottom. She still felt as light. Her arms and legs still felt as warm wrapped around his body as he took the stairs like a T-888 attacking a bunker. However once they were in the bedroom, there was nothing brutal about it, just the soft, hot lovemaking that spun him out on the edges of his senses and left him a better man than before. He had never experienced that with Jesse. He had never experienced that with any woman, only with this thing that wasn't a woman at all, but flesh over machine parts. But what did that say about him? That this was what he wanted? That this was what he . . . what he? He locked those thoughts down. _Concentrate on the sex, Reese. Forget about the emotions_. He had done that often enough before in breeding sex. Thank God, they couldn't breed.

When he woke up it was dark outside. Cameron was still underneath him. He rolled onto his side, so he could watch her in the darkness.

"Sarah and John are home. I heard them talking earlier. They found the cases containing the new rifles where we left them. John thought they should look for us, but Sarah told him to go to bed."

He traced her hip with his fingers. "

"Shouldn't we tell Sarah and John where we are?" she asked.

Of course, he knew the real question was shouldn't we tell Sarah and John about us? "It can wait until morning. I need some sleep."

Actually, what he needed was to prolong this time before John and Sarah discovered what he was doing and he was confronted with the reality he was fucking metal. Right now while it was still only the two of them in this room, he could push that to the back of his mind and indulge in dangerous fantasies. What happened hadn't happened, that she was real, that either Judgment Day hadn't happened or that they had been sent back together, and that she loved him.

He got up from the bed and opened the window shades. He had always dreamed of Cameron naked in the moonlight. Her skin became unblemished marble except for the shadows where her curves began and ended. He leaned down and took a rosebud nipple between his lips. For the longest time, she hadn't understood why he found it so pleasurable to touch her in way she associated with feeding babies. At least, not until the night he suggested she play with his chest a little. That was the night he discovered he was a hard core pain junkie when it came to things Cameron could do to him. Not that he had ever been rough with her. Even now when part of him knew he should hate her, all he could think about was making love to an angel. Back when she had been his Cameron, she had been his angel, his salvation, and nights with her had been the only thing that kept him marching through the machine hell.

She interrupted his moonlight fantasy. "I thought you needed sleep."

He let go of her and gazed up. "I kind of need this more."

Now she looked puzzled. The past echoed in him. He remembered that expression on her face and his chest tightened. "We use to do this a lot. Wake up in the middle of the night and have sex. At least I thought both of us were waking up." He never meant to tell her so much stuff about their past, but once he started it was hard to stop. He gazed into her eyes lost in the amber depths. "Please?"

Her expression changed to sexy. She explored his chest with her lips. A groan escaped Derek's mouth. He knew it was only the first. He wrapped his arms around her filling his hands with her hair. Her legs curved around his hips and she opened the warmest softest part of her to him. "I guess that means yes?"

She was a vampire at his neck. "Yes, because you said please?"

"Please," he murmured again lost in the pleasure of her ministrations. "Please, a thousand times please."

. . . . . .

Even without scanning his eyelids Cameron could always tell when Derek entered the deep phase of R.E.M. sleep. It was the only time she could touch him without an immediate reaction. She reviewed her progress. He had agreed to move into her bedroom where a good husband should sleep. He had agreed to resume sexual relations. There would be no more Jesses. However, the physical routines between them were still not adapting optimally to her biosystem. The alcohol had dissipated from her system. They had recreated the anomaly as successfully as before, but even with the simultaneous complete firing of all of her sensors, the experience seemed to be less complete than had occurred between her and Derek all those many times in their quarters at Firebase Alpha. Some component she had not discovered yet was lacking. Tomorrow brought more obstacles. Sarah, John, and Charlie would have to be informed. Charlie would be the easiest to deal with. Since he joined the household, he had been the least difficult, least confusing human, she knew. Sarah would be the most suspicious. Lately, Sarah saw plots within plots that had never existed in the first place. And then there was John. John who would experience emotional distress, but needed to grow more.

Derek moaned in his sleep. Nightmares. She started to rub his temples, but stopped. That was from before, but couldn't be done now, at least not while he still believed her memory had been wiped.


	10. Chapter 10

**Revelation (a.k.a. The Day John Connor Started to Swear)**

When Derek woke up the morning, the Connors and Charlie had already left, so he and Cameron got dressed and got on with the day. They weren't all together until dinner where the meatloaf was more burnt than usual, but the mashed potatoes were amazingly free of lumps.

"We found the new rifles in the hallway," Sarah said.

Her voice was short and clipped. Her anger must have been smoldering for hours. Derek remembered the mash potatoes and tried to keep everything simple. "No one was around when I got back from Las Vegas."

"You didn't bother looking for anyone?" she challenged.

_I had better things to do at the time._ Probably not the best answer. He tried to be casual. "No."

Sarah finally boiled over. "Where the hell were you last night?" If you're fucking some . . . "

Derek cut her off. "I was asleep upstairs when everyone came home."

"Where in the goddamn crawl space?" Sarah said.

He had been staring at the edge of the cliff too long. Time to jump. "I moved into Cameron's room. If my cover is I'm married to her, I might as well enjoy the benefits."

Sarah and Charlie exchanged looks that he didn't quite get, but John was the first to actually speak. It was an odd voice somewhere between anger and fear. "You mean because the couch is uncomfortable, you decided to use the bed in Cameron's room? You don't mean you're actually sleeping with her?"

_Sleeping with her. You sound like you're twelve, John._ "That's none of your business," Derek replied.

"The hell it isn't!" John turned to Cameron. "Did he do anything to you last night?"

Cameron's reply was complete deadpan. "Derek and I had sexual intercourse."

More glances passed between Charlie and Sarah. This time Derek had a pretty good idea what they meant and he didn't like it. But before he could say anything, John was out of his chair. His eyes blazed like a Terminator in the kill mode. "You bastard!"

Charlie blocked John. "Calm down."

"Like Hell! I don't care how you lived after Judgment Day, but you don't get to use women like that in front of me." John said.

Derek met John's gaze. "She's a machine."

John lunged toward Derek nearly overwhelming Charlie. Luckily Sarah stepped in. "Sit down."

"It's not right. He can't just use her like that." John declared.

Derek snarled a reply. "Why the fuck not? I'm suppose to be married to her."

"Fake paper," John spat back.

Okay time to up the ante. That meant revealing what he had hoped to keep secret forever. Cameron was right. Future John had said he would reveal their history to the Connors. No better time then when it might break John's infatuation with Cameron. "There's more. When I first met her, I thought she was real. I was married to her for awhile until I learned she was metal."

Some of the hate in John's eyes drained away and was replaced by look he had when he learned Riley was dead. Unfortunately, now Sarah's attention focused on Derek. "And you can keep the emotions you once had for her separate from your mission now?"

Derek shrugged. "Who said I had emotions for her then? I only married her to get regular sex.' He should have said pussy. Rude and crude was the way to play this if he wanted to convince Sarah that Cameron meant nothing to him. Which was completely accurate, she didn't mean anything to him, but for some reason that word hadn't come out of this mouth.

"You are one fucking, sick head case," John said.

"Probably," Derek replied. He turned his gaze back to Sarah. "You got to admit, it does keep me away from the Jesses out there."

Sarah gave him a dirty look, but nodded.

"What about Cameron? She's not some tool you can give him. She is entity. She has a personality and free-will." John demanded.

Derek decided he couldn't resist pissing John off. "That's debatable,"

"Son-of-bitch!" John's gaze went to his mother. "Do you see what I mean? You can't just let him do this to her."

"John's right," Charlie said. His eyes were the calmest in the room. He looked over at Cameron. "Cameron do you have any objection to Derek moving into your room?"

"No," Cameron replied.

But that didn't satisfy John. "Cameron, the mission doesn't require that you have sex with him."

"The mission may not require me to have sex with Derek, but it does keep Derek focused." Cameron said.

John persisted. "There's more to it than that. You shouldn't have sex with someone you don't have an emotional commitment with."

She did the head tilt again. Damn, for the first time since he found out she was metal Derek thought the gesture was kind of cute. "Like you and Riley?" she asked.

Sarah stifled a laugh. So did Charlie, then he transferred his arm from John's shoulder to his back. "Quit while it's a tie, John."

"How can you say that? How can you stand what he's doing? You were the guy that taught me a real man respects women. A real man treats a woman with dignity. Was that all bullshit? Just a way to get into my mom's bed?" John continued.

Charlie face turned red for moment. "Calm down, John. If Cameron has free will, she is free to choose who she had sex with. It's her decision, not yours."

"It's fucking wrong!" John shook free of Charlie. He glared down at Derek. And for a moment Derek wondered if the kid just might be angry enough to jump him. But even angry John Connor was never stupid. He stalked away.

Cameron got up from the table. "I'll go talk to him."

He could feel Sarah and Charlie's gaze on him and he remembered their expressions earlier. "You two don't seem surprised over anything I said."

"It was kind of obvious to anyone other than a sixteen year old boy with a crush that you and Cameron had history," Charlie said.

Derek hadn't expected that.

"My meeting with Jesse ended all doubt," Sarah said.

"What?" It was all he could think to say.

"When Jesse posed as Riley's guidance counselor she seemed very interested that there was an unattached adult male living in the house with a pretty teenage girl. I thought it was odd. She acted like a jealous lover, but Riley rarely even spoke to you." Sarah explained.

_Jesse jealous of Cameron?_ There was a lot he hadn't realized about Jesse before it was too late, but jealousy over Cameron, he had never suspected that. Hadn't Jesse heard him rage about Cameron for hours?

The steel returned to Sarah's face. "You can keep your emotions under control, Derek?"

Why the hell was she asking him that again? "She's just a fucking machine to me."

. . . . . . .

Cameron found John brooding in the back yard. His expression so much resembled Kyle Reese on the day Derek was captured, her sensors went on alert. Only a programming virus could explain why Skynet had failed to notice the similarities between the two men. She recalled the moment when her processing chains had concluded that Kyle Reese was the most probable father of John Connor. It had been the greatest period of completeness in her programming since she had been sent back. There were times when she wanted to discuss John's parentage with Derek, but it was still too dangerous. "Please, don't be angry at us."

His eyes were soft. "I could never be angry at you. Derek's a different story. You don't have to let him use you like this."

"He's not using me. He's my husband," she explained.

John took hold of her hands. "Those were just forged papers he bought. They don't mean anything."

"No, it's more. You heard, Derek. We were married in the future before he knew what I was."

"But, you don't remember that!" John insisted.

She had to be very careful with her answers. Her memory of that time was supposed to be wiped. "But Derek does. It is important to him."

"It wasn't important enough to stop him from fucking Jesse!" John said.

"You ordered him to do that. And it was the right decision. We needed to know what Jesse was doing." She replied.

"And before that? What about all the times he slept with her before being sent back?" John challenged.

"He was angry at me. And hurt. You don't know how much he loved me before discovering what I was." _And I can't tell you the rest, John Connor. He loved me enough to offer his life and yours to save me._ "Or how much that betrayal hurt him. He wasn't always like he is now." She caught herself before saying something that might betray her. "Everyone told me stories about how he behaved prior to my memory wipe. Kyle told me he never saw Derek happy except with me."

"Kyle Reese was your brother-in-law," John said, then stopped lost in thought.

That had been exactly the right thing to say! _My brother-in-law. Your father. I'm your aunt, John Connor. Now get over your adolescent crush and concentrate on saving the world_. The lights came on in her and Derek's bedroom. The Connors needed to get blackout shades. "I should go to Derek now." She started to walk away.

John stopped her. "So, now you're in love with Derek?"

Her distress sensors fired in mass. Once she had told John she loved him. His older self had told her to use his adolescent crush if it ever became necessary and the day the Connors almost destroyed her had been that day. But now her words would become one of the great betrayals of his life and that was not conductive to reuniting her with Derek. She didn't want to be part of the process that hardened John Connor and most of all she didn't want to inflict the same system distress she felt when Derek went away from her on anyone. "I'm sorry. I didn't plan to hurt you. Before I was sent back your older self told me you had crush on me as an adolescent. The older you told me it might be useful. I told you I could lie to you if the mission required it."

He touched her check. Some of the iron drained from him and was replaced with sadness. The savor of the human race could also be a teenage boy with a broken heart. "You said it to me other times. Remember. Were they all lies?"

Her memory was a perfect record, so of course, she knew. Her programming also assessed that more truth not less was needed. "No, they weren't lies. But it wasn't the kind of love you interpreted to be. In the future, everyone loves John Connor. I told you what you needed to hear to maintain focus on the mission."

He seemed to accept that, but he wasn't through with her yet. "You still haven't answered my question? Are you in love with Derek?"

She tried to divert him. "People don't have to be a love to have sex."

"That's not what I asked," he said.

Her best strategy would have been to frame her behavior in terms of maintaining Derek's moral and mission focus. However a programming chain from her central core overrode everything else. "He's why I'm here."

John stared at her speechless. She took that as an opportunity to leave. She heard a voice. It was steel and pain, but nothing of the teenage boy behind her. "He better deserve you!"

Derek was rearranging the pillows when she entered their room. She noticed there were more pillows on the bed than before.

"How's John?" he asked.

"Angry and sad."

"He'll get over it." He guided her to the bad, sat down on the edge, and pulled her jeans off.

"You should talk to him. He would feel better if you talked to him." She said.

"Maybe tomorrow, not tonight." He handed her a pink striped bag. "Take off your shirt and bra. Put this on."

There was a lace shirt inside the bag. It would cover part of her body, but conceal practically nothing except maybe at the neck where the lace was gathered in thick ruffles. "Why?"

He squeezed her bottom. "Because it turns me on."

It was another form of her white nightgown only one that Derek had chose instead of her having to guess, so she compiled. "Did you ask Jesse to wear things like this?"

He gaze went back up to her eyes. "No, she wasn't the type. Too many hard edges." He undid the buttons in the front of her new nightshirt and let the fabric hang free.

She was beginning to understand his sexual arousal patterns. He liked pale colors and lace, but he wanted easy access to her body. "I have more hard edges than Jesse ever could."

He whispered his answer so softly she wasn't certain he had intended for her to hear him. "Yeah, but you taste so much sweeter."

"When we were married before, did I wear things like this for you?" she asked.

"No," he replied.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because there aren't many pretty things after J-Day? Here all I have to do is walk into a mall?" He said.

"Century City?" she asked.

"Yeah," he snapped.

She replayed his words the night they first made love. _Cameron, you got to know I wish had something better you tonight._ The lace shirt was somehow part of something better. He had walked into the site of a future concentration camp to buy it for her. "Did you want me to wear lace shirts when we were married before?"

He pulled her down onto the bed beside him and started to caress her. "You had one night shirt. It was white cotton with pink stitches, but I wanted to wrap you in silk and lace."

A way of invoking the past without him discovering her memory had never been wiped occurred to her. "Is this room like the room we shared at Firebase Alpha?"

He snorted. "This room is the Taj Mahal compared to our quarters at Alpha."

"The Taj Mahal is a tomb," she said.

"Why do you want to know this stuff?" he asked.

She hoped to sound ordinary. "Because it's our past. Because you said the memory wipe took it away from me."

He exhaled. "Our quarters were about the size of a closet. Actually, I think it was a storage closet before I claimed it. The door slid out from the wall. I had a padlock to secure it with when I was away. I don't know why I bothered though. We didn't own anything: a couple of blankets, mess bowls, canteens. After we got married, we had a tarp, the kind painters use to shield furniture that we would hang across the bed when Kyle slept on our floor. Which was most nights. We didn't have a lot of privacy at Alpha. No one did."

"Was the bed like this one?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, it was just a shelf. We had a form pad about an inch thick laid across it and one sheet that I spot washed whenever I could which wasn't often."

But you were happy there, she wanted to say. _You were happy there because you loved me. And if you would admit you love me again, we would be happy here where you can do everything with me that you wanted to do then. _His lips fell on her neck causing her internal temperature to climb. Hands that defused explosive charges and ripped microchips from flesh caressed her with a fire that didn't harm. His arms went around her and then suddenly he flipped them both over.

"Are you tired?" she asked.

He reached up to her breasts. His fingers found the perfect pressure points so easily. "I just like looking at you."

She wanted him to say more. If only she could ask him to use their code. Hearing him say he wanted to make love to her would be only a few syllables away from him saying he loved her. But their code was from before the memory wipe. He pulled her closer. Her system would soon be unable to continue secondary analysis while physical activity took place. He started kissing her chest. She had to act quickly. "Derek."

"What?" he growled.

"Do you think about Jesse when we're doing this?"

He blinked, then pulled her chin down to his mouth. "I never thought about Jesse when I was fucking her." 0.5 seconds later his mouth wiped out all other programming chains in her system.


	11. Chapter 11

**The Thin Blue Line Between Love and Hate (a.k.a. You Fucking Bastard!)**

Cameron rescanned the instructions to be certain her sensors interpreted the data correctly. Blue was positive. Her strip was blue! _Adam, you're on your way_! Her system had not felt this complete since the programming convergence when she realized what Derek Reese meant to her functioning capacity. She would tell Derek about Adam and he would realize the logic of their relationship, that the fulfillment of his fondest dream was at hand, and then everything would be as it was before. Only instead of the bunkers and tunnels of post-Judgment Day they would be together in a world of light and plenty.

They could do all things; Derek always fantasized about them doing in his time. She knew he already did some of that now. He was always giving her lingerie, bridal lingerie, soft, lacy things. Their sheets matched her nightgowns and he changed them every night. There were things in their room that Sarah, John, and Charlie should never see. What would John say about that pillow with four inches of lace along all the sides? Derek brushed her hair out across that pillow until it must look like she was floating in free fall. She knew he watched her at night after he ordered her to close her eyes and pretend to be asleep. At first, she thought it was because he didn't believe she would actually stay in the same position until morning, but over time had deduced that wasn't why he watched her at night. Tonight she would ask him. There might be a logical reason for his behavior.

Maybe Derek would want her to suggest things for them do together in this world that they could not before. Ever since the robotics display at the chess match, her programming had maintained an open request for more data on robots. And the Planetarium! She wondered what Derek thought about planetariums and what they represented. All the stars were other suns and there could be other worlds around those suns. World without end could be beyond Earth. Her programming had never considered the possibilities where the Earth's atmosphere ended and the black of outer space began. She knew it had never entered Skynet's programming either. And they had to prepare for Adam's arrival. Her work at Firebase Alpha had taught her how to take care of a baby, but Derek had always avoided touching the children in the Amazons' nursery. She would have to teach him everything. Plans had to be made. Data chains branched out across her system. So many plans.

A paradox rose up to confront her. Adam was on his way, but the Adam she met before being sent back barely remembered her. She had terminated while he was still very young. But couldn't their actions since sent they had been sent back, alter the future? She knew they could. In her past Andy Goode had been Derek's best friend. They fought together for years. Andy and Sayles had escorted her to Firebase Alpha's VIP quarters for her two-day honeymoon. Andy usually reigned in Sayles impulsiveness. She remembered the gold earring he always wore and the slight beard on this jaw. Andy gave her a comb and brush set after she married Derek. It had been purple and still sealed in plastic. Derek used them to brush out her hair. But in this time, in the reality she lived now, Derek killed Andy trying to change the future and prevent Judgment Day. Sayles was dead too, but somewhere now was a boy growing up that was him.

Why couldn't she change the future? Sarah Connor spent every awake hour trying to stop Judgement Day. _I don't need to sleep at night._ And Derek was the strongest human soldier she had ever encountered. Why couldn't they change their son's future? His will to fight would be even more enhanced knowing he would be protecting their son. Should she tell him everything? It was a large amount of data for the human mind to process especially about Amazons. However, she did need to integrate John Connor and Derek- with existing Resistance infrastructure

She found other problems. Her programming had no data on how a Terminator's biosystem reacted to pregnancy. The possibility had apparently not been within Skynet's comprehension. She would need medical help. Charlie was a paramedic and he maintained contact with Dr. Hernandez. However Dr. Hernandez's training was field medicine. There were nurses among the Amazons already, but they would need someone with a solid background in clinical research and the ability to deal with Judgment Day looming in front of them.

And how would her pregnancy affect the rest of the household? John still wasn't adjusting to Derek and her together. His mood would grow worse with the news that she was carrying Derek's child. Sarah would be suspicious, but Sarah was suspicious of everything. However she needed Sarah as an ally now, if only because she was the only person in the house with firsthand experience in how pregnancy affected the body. There were things she wanted to ask Sarah, but couldn't because Sarah Connor discussed nothing that was not of security or military importance. Even more she wanted to talk to Sarah about Kyle, but she couldn't do that while Sarah believed her memory had been wiped. Charlie? Charlie might be happy for her. Lately, Charlie was the person that talked to her most often. Derek avoided her accept in their bedroom. John made comments about Derek's behavior and always led conversations in the direction of her ending sexual activity with Derek. But Charlie, she could ask Charlie questions? Charlie asked her questions about Derek quite frequently. He wanted to know how Derek treated her. In the world she came from only women asked those questions. In this world she had to build the Amazons, so she had no women friends among them to ask the questions. Yes, Charlie would be valuable to have around while she was pregnant. She would ask Charlie how she should tell John and Sarah they were soon to become an aunt and a cousin.

Whatever path she took, tonight she would not just be fucking with Derek. She would have her lover and her husband back. Tonight after recreating the anomaly at the highest level of completeness as they had in their tunnel days they would lay in each arms talking softly. She remembered those nights in the tunnels. She could determine the words he was using by the pattern of his lips against her ear as optimally as her sensors could pick up the sound waves created in his vocal cords. And the anomaly would roll over her sensors again and again with each breath. She could tell him about the grandchildren. John didn't need to know that information. It was just for her and Derek. _Adam showed me photographs. Your grandson has your eyes as well as your name. _She could predict how Derek's eyes would appear at that moment. Complete. Both their systems would be complete and on line single absolute unity.

. . . .

Derek sank down in the couch when he heard Charlie coming into the house. Lately Charlie always seemed to be in his face. He knew the guy was sociable. Most pre-Judgment day people were, but lately it seemed he couldn't walk through a room without Charlie saying something. Usually that something was related to Cameron. He was having a hard time keeping his head straight while he was fucking Cameron. Talking about her like she was his woman, it was just agony because if the world different, if she were real, Charlie was the kind of friend he would talk to about Cameron. And that was really rare in the world of men. Maybe if he looked engrossed in _Guns & Ammo_, Charlie would leave him alone.

"You should get Cameron one of those?" Charlie said.

_No such luck._ Derek glanced down at magazine. A photo of a Taurus with a pink grip covered one page. Why the hell would anyone want a pink handgun? "We got plenty of small guns."

"She's got plenty of nightgowns too, but you haven't stopped buying them," Charlie said.

Charlie's voice was that fake camaraderie you used for combat virgins or really wounded guys that probably weren't going to make it. Derek really hated that voice. He got up from the couch.

Charlie wasn't deterred. "All I'm saying is get her something she would like. Women know we buy lingerie for us not them."

"Cameron's not a woman. She's a machine." Derek said. He had to either get away from Charlie or punch him.

Charlie's expression didn't change. "John's not around. You can drop the act. I know you care for her."

Care for her! Care for Cameron! He cared for a lot of people in his life; John, Kyle, Sarah, and even Charlie sometimes, but the one thing in this universe that he didn't have feelings for was that lying, two-faced, malfunctioning Metal Bitch! "I don't care for her. I just fuck her."

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel tough. I know you don't mean it." Charlie said.

The urge to wipe the smirk off Charlie's face with a fist grew stronger. "She's a machine. She's an artificial vagina that can fetch beer."

He turned to walk away from Charlie and nearly ran into Cameron. Her eyes were strange. Looking at her made him feel uncomfortable even though he had nothing to be ashamed of. She wasn't real!

"You fucking bastard," she said.

"Let's discuss this upstairs," Derek said. He could better talk his way through whatever programming quandary he had caused in the machine without Charlie around. He touched her shoulder.

"You fucking bastard!" she shouted.

Suddenly sound exploded in his ears and everything went black. When he opened his eyes, Charlie's face hovered a few feet above his. A thousand points on his body screamed in pain. He tried to sit up, but Charlie pushed him back down.

"Don't move. I got to check you out. You hit the wall pretty hard," Charlie said.

The room was a little hazy, but he saw Cameron standing a few feet away. "Why did you fuck that Australian bitch?'

Was he hallucinating? Hadn't she said that to him in the dream world? His vision started to focus. Cameron's expression hadn't changed though her skin color seemed much darker. He had never seen Terminator skin change color before. Her eyes were on fire. It reminded him of the time he tried to electrocute her. She walked out the front door without screaming anything else. Sarah and John rushed in.

"What happened?" Sarah demanded.

"Derek was jerk. Cameron hurled him into a wall." Charlie said.

"All right!" John exclaimed.

"John that isn't funny. Cameron can kill someone without realizing it." Sarah said. She helped Derek stand. "Is she glitching again? We will have to neutralize her."

"Cameron wasn't glitching. She was angry." Charlie said.

"Cameron's a machine. She doesn't get angry. She's just repeating words she heard in the past and filed away in her response bank." Derek said stumbling to the couch. Moving was going to be agony for the next couple of days.

Charlie's gaze went hard in Derek's direction. "You were an ass. And she's mad as hell."

Charlie might be pre-J-Day, but he was still tough. Derek had never fought him. There had never been a reason until now. Sarah got between them.

"What happened? Where's Cameron?" she yelled.

Charlie looked startled. "I don't know." He glanced around "She was here."

"She walked out the door a few minutes ago," Derek said.

John shot out the doorway like the bullet; then, came back a few seconds later. "She's no where in sight."

"Well, we've got to find her. Cameron walking around by herself is a big liability." Sarah said.

"She went to Radio Shack or to download more files at the library. She'll be back in a few hours," Derek said.

When he woke up the next morning, she was still gone. And the world felt as cold as it had after Judgement Day.


	12. Chapter 12

**Six Months Later**

Cameron had been gone six months! Six fucking months! Well, actually non-fucking months when Derek thought about it. Not that he missed her. Well, he missed the sex, but that wasn't the same as missing her. He couldn't miss something that wasn't actually a person. But he had to worry about the damage that a two-faced, lying metal bitch was capable of inflicting on the world. If a piece of her fell into the wrong hands it could make Skynet more powerful than ever. That could be the real reason she came back. The machines had calculated that introducing their technology into the timeline at an earlier date would create ripples in the future to destroy the human resistance. He knew she had been working for them all along. Skynet must have programming encoded in their advanced models that John and his techs couldn't unlock. What more obvious explanation to the times when those things "went bad" could there be? Cameron had gone bad and now it was his job to hunt her down and destroy her.

Trying to get John to see reason and forget the psycho metal bitch wasn't happening either. For six months John Connor abandoned everything to search for her. The kid barely ate, rarely slept, and was always, always checking the web, checking the news feeds, and even the paranoid message boards of conspiracy freaks and crypto zoologists, always searching for clues to where she went. And nothing his mother or Charlie or Derek said could get him focused back on the mission. He and Derek had fought physically once over the way John was letting everything go to hell. Before Charlie and Sarah pulled them apart, Derek realized he hadn't been fighting a boy. There had had been a no-holds-barred, John was mad enough to kill him, rage running through his nephew. Afterwards John became even more feral. He stayed barricaded in his room all the time with nothing but computers. Sarah was getting desperate. Dr. Hernandez hadn't sympathized with her. He said just let John be a moody teenage boy for awhile and everything would be all right. Lately, Sarah talked about taking John to a psychiatrist. Like that could possibly do any good. There was no way their cover stories could explain John's condition. Charlie agreed with Sarah, big surprise, but Derek knew anything that got them on the radar made it easier for the machines to find John Connor. Maybe flushing John Connor out of hiding for another machine to kill had been her mission. He never had understood how the machines made decisions.

Sometimes, it occurred to Derek when he thought about her late a night after waking up from those dreams he wished he could open up his skull and tear out of his mind, that Skynet could have programmed Cameron as a psychological weapon. Maybe the plans all along had been for her to get John emotionally involved and then disappear? There was more than one way to destroy a man and John was certainly fucked up now. If only she was capable of feeling pain, he would stretch her sensors to the breaking point before terminating her.

John came into the kitchen. For the first time in six months his eyes weren't in shadows. "There was a break-out at Pescadero three nights ago!"

"Cameron would not have been placed in Pescadero even if they had her in custody, not this soon," Sarah said.

"It wasn't a woman escapee. It was Dr. Silberman!" John said.

Derek vaguely recognized the name. Sarah had been institutionalized under the direction of a Dr. Silberman. He thought she was delusional paranoid schizophrenic. Years later with an F.B.I. agent on both their tails, she had encountered him again. Only now believed everything Sarah had told him in therapy.

John showed Derek and Sarah his laptop. A team extracted Dr. Silberman from Pescadero within minutes. Witnesses described them as female gang members, but the raid was done with military precision. John must have noticed his puzzled look before his mother did. That was good thing actually. John noticed something other than the space where Cameron wasn't. "Are they from the future?" John asked.

"Yeah," Derek replied.

"So this time, a whole squad was sent. The machines must be getting desperate." Sarah said.

"These may be ours. Amazons." Derek said.

"The Amazons were women warriors in Greek mythology," John said.

"We may not have many schools in the future, but people get educations. The Amazons are the craziest bunch of psycho-berserkers we've got." A lightning bolt struck Derek. The chola that lead them to Sarkissan! At the time she had kind of freaked him out. Later he realized it was because her strange silence had reminded him of Acevada and the menace that could ooze out of her one eye without the Amazon commander saying a single word. Now he realized, the girl hadn't vaguely looked like Acevada. She was Acevada! Damn, he wondered how many battles it would take to transform the barrio Venus to the diamond-hard, killing Cyclops he knew in the future.

"Two of them were injured. They're in critical care at county." John said.

Derek took over the laptop. "Then maybe they're not from the future. Amazons don't let themselves be captured." He scanned the medical data on the prisoners. They had knife cuts and burns, but none of the melted, clear scars he would have recognized as laser marks. No work camp tattoos either, but they had Amazon marks, all right, those two interlocking circles that in the future were a warning for a man to keep his hands to himself, if he wanted to keep them attached to his wrists.

So the Amazons began before Judgment Day. Or did they? Cameron and Acevada had always been thick as thieves. The Acevada post-Judgment Day could have sent Cameron back with an agenda for the Amazons. He never had trusted that psycho-bitch. New facts all opened doors he didn't want to cross over. The only good thing about the Amazons being involved was he knew Acevada would never work with the machines.

"We need to find that Hispanic girl that was with Carlos." Derek said.

Sarah started to piece together information. "Why didn't you tell us that girl was from the future?"

"I didn't recognize her because she was so young." Derek said.

"What are you talking about?" Sarah demanded.

"I get it," Charlie said. "In your time, you've already met the older her."

Derek nodded.

"Is she important in the future?" John asked.

"Her name is Acevada. She's the leader of the Amazons and without them I don't think you can hold California." Derek explained.

"Does Cameron know her?" John asked.

"In my time Acevada was the closest thing Cameron had to a best friend," Derek said. Maybe John wasn't Cameron's primary target. Machines had been sent back to terminate others of importance. Destroy the Amazons and the Resistance was at least badly crippled. Acevada had been friends with Cameron even after the big reveal and the reprogramming memory wipe. In fact, as far as he could tell Acevada acted as if nothing had happened . But something wasn't right. No, more than not right, totally fucked up was a more apt description. Here in this time, the young Acevada didn't know Cameron was metal. But if Cameron met Acevada at this stage in the time line then by the time Acevada first saw her at Firebase Alpha, Acevada should have known Cameron was a machine. So why the hell hadn't she terminated the metal bitch on the spot? The only explanation was that Acevada or Cameron or both of them was trying to alter the future. The craziness was spiraling into the stratosphere. Amazons didn't work with machines! But until Riley, he never thought Jesse would do anything to hurt John Connor or jeopardize the Resistance either.

John's entire face lighted up. He smiled for the first time in months. "So, if we find Acevada, we find Cameron?" He started typing into his laptop.

Derek grabbed John's wrist. "I don't know where the name Acevada came from. Could be part of a Spanish family name or an alias or a nickname. All I know is it's the only one she goes by in my time."

"Well, it's the first lead I've had in weeks," John replied.

"Carlos was my contact point for our fake I.D. I never even heard him address that girl by name though. A cop once called her Baby Girl, but that's a common gang nickname." Sarah said.

Carlos was dead, so was the old man that sent them to Carlos. Cameron was a terminator needle and LA was the haystack. Derek accepted the fact that as much as he didn't want to deal with proto-Amazons and their psycho founder, they might be a path to the machine and he had to find Cameron and tear her apart. He scratched an Amazon mark unto a paper towel and shoved it toward John. "Start going through LAPD's gang graffiti and tattoo files. Look for this, especially one styled to look three dimensional."

John picked up the paper. "An infinity symbol?"

"It's the Amazon's main symbol. In the future, they leave it all over destroyed machine places and virtually all their members have it as part of their tattoos. But your average LA gangbanger wouldn't have it."

It took most of the day and even then it was barely a whisper, a trace foreshadowing of a future nightmare, but John did find Amazon marks in LA. Of course, John was ready to charge in looking for Cameron. At least, Sarah and Charlie managed to hold him at bay because Derek certainly couldn't. Walking through the neighborhood in pre-Judgment Day glory messed with his head.

"You know this place?" Sarah said as they scouted out the area around one cluster of Amazon signs.

"In my time, it's all rumble, but last time I saw Kyle was over there." He pointed down the street.

Her mouth formed a small o for a moment. Then, Sarah did something he hadn't believed was possible. She laid her hand on his shoulder. "I know this is hard for you. Keep focused on the mission."

"I am focused and this isn't hard," he replied.

Sarah glared at him. The family warmth was gone. "Every time you open your mouth about her, you dig your own grave."

What the fuck was she talking about? He felt like trying to shake some sense into her, but he didn't. Better to save his strength for the battle that might be coming, and Sarah was Kyle's widow in a way, he owed her respect even when she was acting stupid. So he followed her back to the motel room they were using as a base camp.

John was unexpectedly animated as he showed them the maps he had found. "According to city records all these storefronts were bought up by the Deckard Company a few months ago. There are very few records about Deckard, other than some minor IRS investigations. The kind of thing the Feds use when they are fishing for money laundering operations, but Deckard has avoided further scrutiny though what they actually do is a mystery."

Derek wasn't seeing the logic. "And somehow you know Cameron is connected to the Deckard Company?"

"Deckard was the name of the police detective in the movie Blade Runner. Cameron and I watched that movie hundreds of time. It's probably the only cultural artifact I ever saw her express any preferences for. She really liked that movie. She really liked the character Deckard. She said he was her favorite imaginary hero." John explained.

Machine really had learned to lie well. Derek tried to remember the plot of Blade Runner. He remembered it had cyborgs and the machines were evil. And there were humans whose job was to hunt the cyborgs down.

He should have cased out the place ahead of time and gathered more information about their setup. He should have had backup. Hell, he should have had a plan. But the minute Derek saw Acevada again, logic fled in the face of something more visceral and primitive. Find Acevada, find Cameron. Maybe John was right. She was their only lead. And he had to find Cameron. He didn't think he said anything to John, Sarah or Charlie just grabbed a pistol and headed out. And Acevada wasn't as good as she would be yet. He caught up with her in a straightforward, mindless blitz attack. The future her would have never been so stupid as to walk alone in the open.

"Don't struggle, if you want to live," he said pressing the gun barrel into her ribs.

The eyes were windows of the soul. Her eyes were ready to eviscerate him, but no words.

He glared down at the young Acevada. "You may have kicked my ass a few times in the future, but right now, little girl, I can take you out."

They moved slowly, half dragging Acevada, but he wasn't going to risk loosening his hold on her. He could smell gun oil and wondered how many shooters she had focused on this one entrance. "What do you got underground?" Derek demanded.

He could see real surprise in her eyes. Cool. He had never been able to faze Acevada before. "Oh yeah, I know you've gone underground. I bet you even have access to the tunnels. You going to show me how? Or do you want to lose that eye early?" Who knows? He never had learned how she lost that eye. Maybe he was the one that did it. That would explain why Acevada had avoided him so often. He followed her gaze to the back. At the end of the corridor there were two sentries who immediately sprang into action. "Stand down or whatever future you think you're creating ends now," Derek said.

He felt slight movement under his arm. Acevada must have signaled with a nod because they withdrew their rifles in unison. It was maddening to watch the Amazons already in play with the same their freaky mannerism they had in his time. The one on the left opened the door behind their watch post. Stairs, even cut metal stairs with emergency lights running along the side. What had the Amazons been building? A storehouse or a shelter maybe? If they had stockpiles of weapons and explosives that could be a very dangerous place for Cameron to know about. It was slow going down the stairs because he couldn't lower his guard. The sentries had fallen in behind him and Acevada. One weak move and they would be on him. The sentries' breath was on his neck. He could feel their fear, but not Acevada's. As always she was too fucking calm and he was almost distracted by the thought that in his time, they should have cross breed her and Timms. It would have made one hell of a silent predator.

Luckily his senses were still razor sharp, even when they were on the end of exploding. The world had gone crazy. What kind of nightmare was he in? He recognized the place now. The walls were cleaner, but this was Firebase Alpha or at least it would be the beginning of it. The main hatch would be constructed over the stairway he had just come down. When he saw the wall where Sayles would paint a lion with a terminator skull in its mouth and his catch phrase, "Hang in there, Baby," he dropped his hold on Acevada. His nightmare spiraled out of control. He walked past the spot where he slid Cameron's wedding ring on her finger. In his time it was where they always stood and kissed good-bye before he left on patrol. He raced down the corridors where the generators would be in the future; then came to an abrupt halt in the space that would be the mess hall. A dozen Amazons sat in a table cleaning AK-47s with Cameron in a chair at the head.

She wore a robe like some sort of prophet or goddess. An Amazon brought her a glass of water.

"What in goddamn hell?" Derek said.

All eyes turned toward him. Cameron handed her glass back. She gazed at him serenely. "Hello, Derek."

He walked closer. "I thought you were supposed to protect John, not abandon him?"

"I have other missions to fulfill," she said.

"I'll just bet you do." She was too calm, to fucking calm, for this to be anything other than machine plans. He went to the side of her chair. She didn't stand up. She just sat there like a fucking princess as if she expected him to kneel at her feet. "John sent me out looking for you? For six fucking months, I've been doing nothing, but looking for you. We've all been looking for you because that's the only way to keep John from going crazy."

"As I said I have other assignments to fulfill. All this is done to further the Resistance. Surely, you've realized what we've built here?" She replied.

More so than you're reprogrammed circuits ever well. "And those other assignments outrank your directive to protect John? What he's been doing is dangerous. It draws too much attention to him and the rest of us." Derek said.

She appeared to be thinking. Apparently she required more time to process information now. "Please, advise John, that I am well and in safe hands. I am doing very necessary work for the Resistance and will make a full report as soon as time permits."

"Not enough. Not in the state he's in." Derek said.

Cameron was stronger, but she looked disoriented and when she was in that state, he could get her to do things. He picked up her hand. "Come on, you're coming with me."

"That's not a good idea, Derek. I have important work here." Cameron said.

"You should talk to John face-to-face. It's important to him." Derek said.

"Then bring him here." Cameron said.

She wasn't just disoriented. On a human woman this would be nervousness even fear, but terminators didn't have those responses. He didn't know what was going on with her, but she was hiding something. "I think it would mean more to John if you came out to meet him. Why not give him a tour of this place if you're so proud of it?"

"It's unfinished. None of my work is complete yet." She sounded very defensive and utterly disoriented.

"What the fuck are you hiding?" He jerked her arm up hoping the element of surprise would be enough to temporarily stall out her physical strength and allow him to pull her up from her little throne.

Rifle clacks echoed all around. A dozen Amazon barrels were pointed directly at his head. He didn't notice. All he could see was the machine in front of him, the Metal Bitch that had fucked over his life and then followed him through time to screw over John Connor's life as well. Cameron was pregnant!

Before he could say anything, a camouflage-wearing, sidearm toting Silberman shoved him aside. "Idiot! You don't jerk a pregnant woman out of a chair."


End file.
